Ten per cent of courses affected by Proctortrack hack, says school official

An official from the University of Regina says about 10 per cent of courses were affected by a security breach involving Proctortrack.

“We are working hard to manage the impact on the university’s academic operations but it is not that substantial in the context of the university overall,” said Art Exner, associate vice-president of information services.

Proctortrack is a software used to prevent cheating as students write exams remotely.

The school was notified about the security breach last week.

While the issue has been resolved, Proctortrack was shut down for about a week, meaning alternate arrangements were needed for exams scheduled during that time period.

Verificient Technologies, the company that provides the service, told the school that student data was not affected.

There are two types of data collected.

“On the Proctortrack platform, there’s student identity data which is maintained for one year,” he said.

“And there’s exam-related data which is maintained for 180 days and in each case, after the expiry of retention period, that data is deleted and removed.”

Exner said security breaches are not unique to vendors like Verificient and there will be an audit and review into the breach.

“To the extent that the vendor can provide us the information … we need to understand what events took place, how the breach was able to occur, what steps the company has taken to prevent a recurrence of the breach and we need to understand during the period that the breach was in place what information was accessed, altered, copied or deleted,” he said.

Students have raised privacy concerns about Proctortrack before the breach. The students’ union plans to hold an online forum for members to share their experiences with the software.

Exner said he wants them to remember that proctoring is meant to preserve academic integrity.

“The whole point of proctoring is really to maintain that confidence in the quality of education the student has received and the value of the degree the student is leaving the university with,” Exner said.