Ministry of Education to remove Mobile Guardian app from all student devices after cybersecurity breach

SINGAPORE – The Mobile Guardian app will be removed from all student education devices after a global cybersecurity breach affected 13,000 students from 26 secondary schools in Singapore.

The Ministry of Education (MOE) said in a statement on August 5 that the app would be removed from all iPads and Chromebooks as a precaution and that work was underway to safely return the devices to normal use.

Mobile Guardian is a device management app that helps parents control their children’s device usage by limiting screen time and access to specific websites and apps.

The Ministry of Education said that late on the evening of August 4, some schools reported that some students using iPads or Chromebooks were unable to access apps and information stored on their devices.

Investigations conducted by Mobile Guardian have revealed that a cybersecurity incident involving unauthorised access to the platform has occurred, affecting customers worldwide, including those in Singapore, the MOE said.

Due to the data breach, the affected students’ devices were remotely wiped, MOE said, with no evidence that student files were accessed.

“We understand that students are naturally concerned and anxious about the incident. MOE is working with schools to support affected students, including sending additional IT teams to schools and providing additional educational resources,” the ministry said.

The Ministry of Education said the security incident on August 4 has nothing to do with the earlier technical issues that students had to face in late July 2024.

The Straits Times newspaper reported earlier that more than 1,000 students from at least five secondary schools under the Education Ministry were affected by the Mobile Guardian app bug.

As early as July 30, some students reported that they were unable to turn their iPads on or off, while others were unable to connect to Wi-Fi and received an error message: “The Guided Access app is unavailable. Please contact your administrator.”

According to MOE, the cause of the fault was human error in the configuration of Mobile Guardian.

In a statement posted on its website on August 5, Mobile Guardian said that since the security incident, “servers have been taken down to prevent further damage from the perpetrator.”

Mobile Guardian said it received a notification of suspicious activity on its platform at 10pm Singapore time on August 4 and detected unauthorised access to its system.

The company said it is currently investigating the breach, which has affected users across the world, including in the United States, Europe and Singapore.

“This resulted in a small percentage of devices being deregistered from Mobile Guardian and having their content remotely wiped,” Mobile Guardian reported.

According to Mobile Guardian, users should contact their local IT administrator to reactivate their device.

This is the second cybersecurity incident involving Mobile Guardian in six months. In April, Mobile Guardian’s user management portal at its headquarters in Surrey, UK, was hacked, exposing data including the names and email addresses of parents and teachers at five primary schools and 122 secondary schools in Singapore.