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Data Security: 13 Breaches Reported So Far This Month
1/25/2008
- Texas State University's Computer Science Department, which has posted employment information and other data about Southwest Texas State University faculty and administrators from 1998 through 2003 in an Excel file that has been online since March 2006.
- Information about Murray State University College of Education students, including Social Security numbers, was posted online in an Excel file and accessible through Google's cache for about a year and a half. Two hundred sixty students were affected.
- At Colorado State University, four files were discovered online that contained information about 300 students on the Warner College of Natural Resources Web site, including passwords and 208 Social Security numbers. The university has since removed the files and worked to get the information out of search engine caches.
- An Excel file containing personal information from 89 Brigham Young University medical school applicants was placed online. The file has since been removed.
- An Excel file was also discovered on Montana State University's Web site containing names, Social Security numbers, and other personal data on 42 employees who were hired in 2006. The file has since been removed.
In the category of lost data, Tennessee Tech reportedly lost a flash drive containing names and Social Security numbers of 990 students who resided on the campus in fall 2007. The university notified the students and apologized but said there was no evidence that the data has been used for identity theft. The university also said in a statement released Jan. 14 that it will be moving to a new data system that will replace Social Security numbers with individually assigned campus ID numbers.
Earlier in the month, the University of Akron also alerted current and former students from the College of Education that a hard drive containing Social Security numbers and other personal information was lost. For the 800 individuals affected, the university offered a free year of fraud protection service, in addition to providing resources to assist with and answer questions about the incident.
A hard drive was also reported stolen from New Mexico State University. ESI said the hard drive was a backup used by a university employee and that it contained the names and Social Security numbers of all Special Events Department employees hired since 1999. ESI said the data on the drive was encrypted and that the department is "working to determine just how many individuals were affected by this incident and is working to notify those individuals."
Finally, there have also been two university server hackings reported so far this month. We reported Jan. 10 about one of these at the University of Georgia, in which a security breach is suspected of exposing as many as 4,250 Social Security numbers, including those of several hundred current residents. See the link at the bottom of this article for the full story and additional references.)
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