ID theft risk: Data breaches at colleges and universities
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009
There were three reported data breaches at institutions of higher learning in the United States last month, making November a relatively uneventful month for data breaches. I say relatively uneventful because there have been 72 data breaches so far this year at colleges and universities—an average of more than six a month so far this year.
There were also fewer records exposed than in many other months, with a total of only 5,409; that compares well to October when there were more than twice that number of records exposed in a total of seven reported breaches.
The November data breaches bring the total number of reported exposed records to 868,286. The actual total is much higher than that, though; 11 of the incidents were reported with an “unknown” number of records exposed, and in one incident the number of exposed records was reported as “thousands.”
- 11/1—Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Bloomsburg, PA
- 574 records exposed
- Stolen laptop
- Names, Social Security numbers and grades of students enrolled in a psychology class taught by Julie Kontos between Summer 2004 and Spring 2006 were stored on the laptop stolen from a university office.