Scott O’Connell reports: MassBay Community College notified employees last week that a security breach had been discovered in the school’s worker database system. The glitch, which affected nearly all employees in the system since 2002, allowed certain staff to view personal information like Social Security numbers and home addresses of anyone in the database. College…
Category: Education Sector
Maybe we should prohibit school districts from maintaining electronic databases
Yes, I know that idea would send us back in time, but yet another ridiculous data breach involving a public school’s system being hacked by students has me pulling my hair out and wishing for more regulation or something. WXPI in Pennsylvania reports: Investigators said the hacking began in May on two students’ home computers….
UK: Stolen backup drive results in undertaking for Phoenix Nursery School
Phoenix Nursery School in Wolverhampton ran afoul of the Data Protection Act when an unencrypted backup tape containing names and addresses of 70 pupils and their parents or guardians was stolen, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said today. The tape also contained a small amount of information relating to the health of several pupils. According…
Update to UCLA Dept. of Psychology breach
On Saturday, I had noted a breach involving the UCLA Department of Psychology and had tried to alert the department to the breach. They never responded to my notification. Today, the student paper reports the breach. Their report suggests that the university may already have been aware of it before I tried to notify them….
Santa Clara University: Hacker changed grades of 60 students
Sean Webby and Lisa Fernandez report: Santa Clara University’s academic records database was recently hacked to improve the grades of more than 60 former and current undergraduate students, the university announced Monday. The university called in the FBI, which is assisting in the ongoing investigation, according to university officials. No arrests have been reported. “We…
Large-scale data theft fazes Finnish cops
From AFP: Finnish police on Monday called on users of online services to change their passwords after nearly 15 000 user names and passwords were stolen and published on the internet. “If I could get one message across to people, it would be to change your passwords, especially the important ones,” Timo Piiroinen of the…