Education Sector

ACU says computer server hacked

Brian Bethel reports: An Abilene Christian University computer server was hacked near the end of February, but university officials do not at this point believe any personal information was distributed. An e-mail dated one week ago from the college’s information technology branch states that the school experienced a security breach in a database containing...

TX: UPD looking into stolen debit cards

Brandon Scott of The Huntsville Item reports: The University Police Department has been investigating reported stolen debit cards of students from Sam Houston State University. Huntsville police and the University police have totaled 24 cases of debit card and identity theft within the past month, all of which have been campus issued BearkatOne cards.

CA: Security breach at SCC inspires shredding changes

Sarah Rohrs reports that a computer printout containing the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of students in the 2008 graduating class of Solano Community College accidentally got mixed in with scrap paper used in a mathematics lab. The college believes it recovered all of the pages.

RI: E-mail error by Brown University leads to changes

Joanna Wohlmuth of The Brown Daily Herald reports that Brown’s Office of Financial Aid most likely did not violate federal or state laws when it inadvertently revealed the full names and email addresses of nearly 1,800 students who have initiated an application for University financial assistance in an email reminder to applicants. That sounds...

Ca: Huron University College data exposure

The University of Western Ontario has posted a notice on its site: Huron University College is seeking assistance in reaching former students, former applicants to Huron, or former residents in Huron’s dormitories whose personal information may have been accessed during a computer server security breach. Huron is an independent, self-governing institution affiliated with The...

University of West Georgia notifies students and faculty of data theft

The Associated Press is reporting that the University of West Georgia has notified nearly 1,300 students and faculty that their personal information was on a laptop that was stolen last summer. The laptop, which contained names, addresses, phone numbers and Social Security numbers, was in possession of a professor. The university says that it...

Penn State: Employees alerted to possible security breach

From the CentreDaily.com: The Social Security numbers of employees working at Penn State Office of Physical Plant in 2000 may have been stolen. On Feb. 20, a virus infiltrated an administrative computer that contained more than 1,000 social security numbers of OPP employees, said OPP spokesman Paul Ruskin.

University of Florida: “starting to have…. quite a reputation”

Nathan Crabbe of The Gainesville Sun reports that in addition to the breaches that recently made the news, UF has had four cases of ID theft resulting from breaches. During a committee meeting of university trustees at which they passed federal rules intended to prevent identity theft, UF Chief Privacy Officer Susan Blair described...

Stolen computer at UT contains personal information of students, faculty

A computer stolen from the University of Toledo contained personal information for about 24,000 students and 450 faculty during the 2007-08 and 2008-09 academic years, the university announced Monday. The computer was password protected and many of the files were specifically encrypted or individually password protected, he said. The personal data was saved...