Watch out students. No where seems to be safe on campus anymore. Not even the private offices of workers who handle the confidential data of many students. No wonder there is always such a flurry of signs reminding students at the end of the semester that they need to be mindful of their belongings, since people are stealing everything that isn’t bolted down to profit from at book sell back time. Even those things that are bolted down can walk away as was the case earlier in the month when a desktop computer was taken from an administrative office. There has been no word yet on which specific office was robbed or the exact material contained on the hard drive.

What is clear at this point is that over 6,200 students have been notified of the breach, although this was only made clear to the media through the outreach of the father of a student who was affected. It isn’t understood why the university did not approach the media and own up to its responsibility that its systems had been breached. Some have speculated that the East Tennessee State University is fearful that it will be found in violation of some of its safety and security policies. No word yet on how the university has responded to these accusations.

The breach not only affects current students, but also alumni. Unfortunately there hasn’t been any discussion about how far into the past the data goes, so there is no window of time that we can report to the public to let them know whether or not they should be concerned. The best thing to do is to keep an eye out for a letter from the university that deals with this case. Those seeking more information can contact the university’s Department of Safety.

The information contained on the desktop was encrypted and it met the standards that educational institutions are expected to have. At the same time, university officials have noted that there is a slight chance that the data could still be accessed, although there have been no reports of this happening. As the investigation continues, the university says that it will keep everyone posted and that it will assess its security settings to determine whether or not they need to be upgraded.

In the meantime, those affected are advised to contact one of the credit bureaus to place a fraud alert on their accounts. There are some ID theft subscription services, one being Lifelock, that provides continuous monitoring services. They contact all three credit bureaus, Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian and monitor for new loan and credit card applications. Whenever one of these applications appears, Lifelock contacts its customer to make sure that the application is legitimate and not some effort at identity theft.

Tags: East Tennessee State University, Equifax, ETSU, Experian, lifelock, TransUnion

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under Individuals, School Breaches. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.