D. Frank Smith reports: Colleges have consistently been a prime target for hackers. In 2013, the University of Wisconsin sustained up to 100,000 hacking attempts each day, according to The New York Times. And research released May 20by the EDUCAUSE Higher Education Information Security Council shows that the education sector topped the charts in a survey of…
Category: Education Sector
Audit of Southern Illinois U. uncovers multiple concerns
Associated Press reports that an audit of Southern Illinois University reveals that hundreds of computers are unaccounted for, raising concerns as to whether any confidential information was on them. Also of note: The audit also uncovered multiple breaches of confidential student information at the two campuses – including the names, grades and Social Security numbers of more…
San Diego State University notifies students of information exposure
So as if we didn’t have enough breaches in higher education recently, San Diego State University is notifying students who were enrolled in Pre-College Institute programs that their name, Social Security number, date of birth, address, and other personal information was in a database that enabled any computer connected to the SDSU wired network (offices,…
The MCCCD breach: Breach costs now approach $20 million
Mary Beth Faller reports that breach costs for the Maricopa County Community College District (“MCCCD”) breach continue to rise: The Maricopa County Community College District governing board has approved an additional $2.3 million in lawyers’ fees to deal with the computer-security breach that occurred last year. The board also approved spending $300,000 to deal with…
UK: University of Nottingham mistakenly sends e-mail containing personal details of job applicants
Marcus Boocock reports: Confidential details of thousands of job applicants were mistakenly sent via e-mail by the University of Nottingham. An attachment sent to users of the university’s job site contained the names of 4,751 people who had applied for a job there. It also listed whether they had been successful. A spokesman for the…
Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine students notified of breach by benefits administrator Hubbard-Bert
Hubbard-Bert is the benfits administrator for students at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine. On April 24, they learned that spreadsheets containing personal information of some LECOM students was inadvertently exposed on the Internet due to a misconfiguration of a test server on April 14 (yes, a test server should not have live data for exactly…