Hawks, State Security probing possible matric results breach
The Department of Basic Education on Monday confirmed a possible breach of matric results.
Johannesburg company Edumarks is under scrutiny for allegedly selling 2024 matric results to learners for R100 before the department announced the official results.
Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube said State Security and the Hawks are investigating, vowing that arrest will be made.
“We are grateful to the State Security and Hawks for stepping in as soon as they could to help us with a speedy investigation.
“This is extremely serious because if, indeed, there is a breach in our system, there are two processes we need to follow. Number one, we need to determine, as the DBE, if our systems are secure and airtight enough,” Gwarube explained.
She added that the possible breach of results could have occurred when the department shared its results with other stakeholders who needed the results ahead of the official announcement.
“And so, if the breach has come from the DBE, we will be investigating, and consequence management will follow. However, we might be a victim of cybercrime, and this is why State Security and the Hawks have been involved.”
Gwarube denied that the department failed to respond when news of the possible breach became public on Sunday.
“The reason why we have not been able to respond for the last 48 hours is that the Hawks indicated that their investigation was at an advanced stage. Therefore the matter was too sensitive to speak on.
“We know that should there be a breach in the results, it would have been at the tail-end of sharing results, so this has nothing to do with the back-end capturing of the results. The back capturing and calculating of the results is done in a completely different process, with very few and limited people involved.”
Gwarhube assured the public that the possible leak has not compromised the integrity of the results, which are due to be announced on Monday evening.
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