Tom Horne courtesy photo Cronkite News
Kiera Riley
Arizona Capitol Times
The Arizona Department of Homeland Security concluded a former Arizona Department of Education staffer is behind a data leak of Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) families’ personal information.
In a report on the leak, AZDOHS found breach of vendor ClassWallet’s system stemmed from a permission setting switch by a former ESA administrator at the department.
While not explicitly named by AZDOHS, evidence presented in the executive summary released to the public appears to implicate former ESA Director Christine Accurso or Linda Rizzo, who was the ESA director of operations.
Accurso and Rizzo resigned the same day the AZDOHS incident response team met with members of ADE.
Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne and an AZDOHS spokesman declined to say which employee is referenced in the full report.
ADE put out a statement from Horne this morning naming Accurso specifically but declining to speculate on her reason for leaving.
“The Arizona Department of Education had no way to know the reason for the resignation of Christine Accurso other than her own statements in her letter of resignation,” Horne said in the statement.
However, later in the day he told the Arizona Capitol Times that the department had “some indications,” but “we didn’t reach the conclusion that it was one of the people that resigned until the report came out today.”
An executive summary from AZDOHS details the timeline of the data leak and subsequent response by ADE, the state treasurer’s office, ClassWallet and the Arizona Department of Homeland Security.
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