Data Breaches and College Campuses; They Are Real…It Happened at Boston University

We are never comforted by news of security breaches. In fact, it reinforces our strong belief that every type of organization — from government agencies to small businesses — needs to be prepared for the worst, because the worst will happen. And, when we started to post podcasts and commentary from CIOs at some of the most reputable universities, we did not expect to see news about a breach occurring at an esteemed institution like Boston University — reinforcing the fact that breaches are real in the academic setting.

The word is that Social Security numbers and other personal information of thousands of ROTC members, including more than 400 from Boston University, have been compromised for almost a year. The vulnerability was discovered when someone affiliated with ROTC at BU had installed a file transfer program onto a military server without permission. See all it takes is a simple file transfer program to expose sensitive data.

And, if many of our readers recall from our podcast with Chris Fulkerson, Assistant Vice President for Technology and CIO, Elon University, the vulnerabilities could lie anywhere in a university setting. Whether it’s a new file transfer system, or a professor throwing old student records in the trash, the opportunities for bad guys to steal data is far too great.