Ministry of Education to remove Mobile Guardian app from students’ devices after hacking incident

The Ministry of Education said an investigation by Mobile Guardian determined there had been a “global cybersecurity incident” involving unauthorised access to the platform that affected customers, including those in Singapore.

Initial checks revealed that hackers remotely deleted data from the devices of about 13,000 students from 26 secondary schools in Singapore.

The ministry added that there is currently no evidence that the hacker gained access to user files.

“As a precaution, the Ministry of Education will be removing the Mobile Guardian Device Management app from all iPads and Chromebooks,” the Ministry of Education said in a statement.

“Work is underway to safely return these devices to normal use. MOE is considering other mitigation measures to regulate the use of the devices to support learning during this period.”

The Ministry of Education stressed that Sunday’s incident was not related to earlier technical issues that students encountered in late July due to a human error in the configuration of Mobile Guardian.

“We understand that students are naturally concerned and anxious about this incident,” the MOE said in a statement.

“MOE is working with schools to support affected students, including deploying additional mobile IT teams to schools and providing additional educational resources.”

The incident comes after a similar data breach in April in which personal information of parents and staff from 127 schools was accessed via the Mobile Guardian app.