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Data Security
Peace (of Mind) in Our Time
10/1/2007
The BIG TARGET
THE DAYS OF INTERNET joyriding are over. University databases—which contain Social Security numbers and other confidential information— are now prime targets for hackers. Think it can’t happen on your campus? Here’s a sampling of recent break-ins:
March 2005: Harvard (MA), MIT, and Stanford (CA) business schools’ admissions are hacked.
March 2005: California State University-Chico is hacked; information on students is stolen.
June 2005: The University of Southern California online application system is hacked.
October 2005: Hacker accesses University of California-Berkeley research being performed for Department of Social Services; data on 600,000 people is exposed.
October 2005: The University of Georgia is hacked; information on 1,600 employees, including Social Security numbers, is accessed.
May 2006: Ohio University officials discover that the university’s database had been compromised for over a year; hackers gained access to the personal data of more than 300,000 alumni and other individuals.
December 2006: UCLA alerts 800,000 current and former students, faculty, and staff that a database containing their personal information has been accessed by a hacker for more than a year.
May 2007: It’s revealed that more than 22,000 student records may have been compromised when a hacker infiltrated a University of Missouri database.
May 2007: The University of Colorado-Boulder acknowledges that nearly 45,000 student names and Social Security numbers were exposed to potential identity fraud when a worm attacked a computer server at the university.
June 2007: The University of Virginia discovers a security breach in one of its computer applications that resulted in the exposure of sensitive information belonging to nearly 6,000 current and former UVA faculty members.
Sources: Bill Wall, HackWire, SecurityProNews, SearchSecurity.com, TGdaily.com, UVA Today.
“The solution profiles all the devices on the network, manages that information in a database, and then assigns the appropriate security policies to each device,” says Jerry Skurla, VP of marketing at Bradford Networks. Using NAC appliances, many universities are helping students to register and configure their PCs for campus networks even before they arrive for fall or spring semesters, Skurla notes.
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