Earlier this month, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Newspaper reporter Josh Renaud found a flaw on the website of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that had compromised social security numbers and personal credentials of thousands of administrators, public school teachers, and other education personal. 

Two weeks after a newspaper identified a security flaw on a state website, Mike Parson’s administration recruited a third-party cybersecurity institution for further investigation and monitoring of the incident.

Last week Missourian government has signed a legal agreement with Identity Theft Guard Solutions, also known as ID Experts. This company provides facilities regarding data breach attacks and credit monitoring services. The matter came into the limelight when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch discovered suspicious activities in its investigation that potentially compromised the Social Security numbers of 100,000 Missouri teachers. 

However, the legal agreement does not state that the ID Experts will focus on that flaw but it does specify that it will cost state taxpayers around $4.5 million to notify the teachers of the potential breach attacks and facilitate them with credit monitoring services. 

In the wake of the incident, Missouri Government threatened to seek legal action against St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalists who discovered a security flaw. Instead of thanking the journalist, the government was claiming that the journalist is a "hacker" and that the newspaper's reporting is nothing more than a "political vendetta" and "an attempt to embarrass the state and sell headlines for their news outlet." The Republican governor has also held the newspaper “accountable". 

“This matter is serious. The state is committing to bringing to justice anyone who hacked our system and anyone who aided or encouraged them to do so — in accordance with what Missouri law allows AND requires. A hacker is someone who gains unauthorized access to information or content. This individual did not have permission to do what they did. They had no authorization to convert and decode the code,’’ Parson later tweeted.