Illuminate Education, Inc. Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (ILL4002440110825)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Illuminate Education, Inc. breach identified under incident ID ILL4002440110825.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Illuminate Education, Inc.'s information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/illuminate-education, the number of followers: 14368, the industry type: Software Development and the number of employees: 81 employees

After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 752 and after the incident was 556 with a difference of -196 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.

In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Illuminate Education, Inc. and their customers.

Illuminate Education recently reported "Illuminate Education Data Breach and $5.1 Million Settlement for Student Data Protection Failures", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.

Illuminate Education, an ed-tech software company, failed to safeguard student data due to inadequate security measures, including lack of encryption, improper account management, and failure to delete data post-contract.

The disruption is felt across the environment, and exposing Student names, Birth dates and Student ID numbers, with nearly ~1.7 million (NY students; total across CA/CT unspecified) records at risk, plus an estimated financial loss of $5.1 million (settlement with NY, CA, CT).

In response, teams activated the incident response plan, and began remediation that includes Mandated encryption of all collected/stored data, Access limitation policies and Network monitoring for suspicious activity, and stakeholders are being briefed through Public statements by NY/CA/CT Attorneys General and Court-ordered annual disclosures to schools.

The case underscores how Completed (state-led; company found deficient in investigation efforts), teams are taking away lessons such as Ed-tech companies face heightened scrutiny for student data protection, Ignoring third-party cybersecurity recommendations can lead to severe breaches and State AGs are increasingly collaborating on cross-border enforcement for data privacy, and recommending next steps like Implement end-to-end encryption for all student data, Adopt zero-trust principles for account permissions and decommissioning and Establish continuous network monitoring with anomaly detection, with advisories going out to stakeholders covering School districts must be notified annually about data collection types (e.g., health records) and Parents/guardians likely received breach notifications (implied but not detailed).

Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.

Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (85%), with evidence including lack of account management (inactive accounts not decommissioned), and excessive account permissions in vulnerability_exploited. Under the Persistence tactic, the analysis identified Account Manipulation: Additional Cloud Roles (T1098.003) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating excessive account permissions and failure to decommission inactive accounts. Under the Privilege Escalation tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with moderate to high confidence (85%), supported by evidence indicating excessive account permissions enabled unauthorized access to student data. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate to high confidence (75%), supported by evidence indicating insufficient network monitoring for suspicious activity allowed undetected access and Indicator Removal: File Deletion (T1070.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating failure to remediate known vulnerabilities suggests log/trace deletion or neglect. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Unsecured Credentials: Credentials In Files (T1552.001) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating unencrypted student data implies credentials/storage may also lack encryption. Under the Discovery tactic, the analysis identified File and Directory Discovery (T1083) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating ~1.7 million student records exposed suggests attacker enumerated data repositories. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (95%), supported by evidence indicating data exfiltration such as Yes with PII (names, birth dates, IDs, demographics) compromised. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol: Exfiltration Over Unencrypted/Obfuscated Non-C2 Protocol (T1048.003) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating data was unencrypted and exfiltration confirmed in data_breach section. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Destruction (T1485) with lower confidence (30%), supported by evidence indicating no confirmed data destruction but improper data retention hints at potential tampering and Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with lower confidence (10%), supported by evidence indicating no ransomware mentioned but included due to lack of encryption (low confidence). These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.