Pearson, a London-based publishing and education giant that provides software to schools and universities has agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that it misled investors about a 2018 data breach resulting in the theft of millions of student records. From a report: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced the settlement on Monday after the agency found that Pearson made “misleading statements and omissions” about its 2018 data breach, which saw millions of student usernames and scrambled passwords stolen, along with the administrator login credentials of 13,000 schools, district and university customer accounts.
The agency said that in Person’s semi-annual review filed in July 2019, the company referred to the incident as a “hypothetical risk,” even after the data breach had happened. Similarly, in a statement that same month, Pearson said the breach may include dates of birth and email addresses, when it knew that such records were stolen, according to the SEC. Pearson also said that it had “strict protections” in place when it actually took the company six months to patch the vulnerability after it was notified.
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