DAPHNE — A Daphne High student is expected to face charges for allegedly “tampering with a server of a company that supplies data services to schools in the Southeast,” a Baldwin County education official said Friday. Terry Wilhite, Board of Education director of communications, confirmed that a male student is being investigated and will likely soon face charges in this case.

“No data for Baldwin County was compromised,” Wilhite said in a telephone interview. “But it appears that the student did compromise data for schools in other states,” he said.

He said a Mobile-based company, STI Inc., was impacted by the alleged crime. “It appears that he was able to hack into a server containing school data for systems across the region,” Wilhite said. “Fortunately, he was not able to penetrate the firewall of the Baldwin County system,” he said.

He described the firewall as “an electronic security layer aimed at providing this type of protection.”

Wilhite said the case is being investigated by the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service. The investigation began March 30, he said.

Wilhite said the student has already been expelled from school. He was unable to give a motive for the male’s actions.

Wilhite said that he had not heard that the suspect’s having received a bad grade was the reason for the alleged crime.

“What I can say about him is that he was an extremely brillant student with extra savvy computer skills,” Wilhite said.

A press conference is expected to be held Monday, although a time or location has not yet been set, Wilhite said.

“There are no formal charges against him yet, however they are forthcoming,” Wilhite said.