In news today it has come to light that University of Maryland has fallen victim to a database breach of over 300,000 records, dating back to 1998. UMB President Wallace Loh was informed by Brian Voss, the VP of IT at the university.
“A specific database of records maintained by our IT Division was breached yesterday. That database contained 309,079 records of faculty, staff, students and affiliated personnel,” Dr. Loh said. “The records included name, Social Security number, date of birth, and University identification number.”
How the breach occurred has not been made public yet, but this follows close to other recent attacks against Target, Forbes, and others. UMD is offering free credit monitoring for a year to anyone involved in the data theft and Dr. Loh has apologized to those effected.
It will be interesting to keep tabs on this and see exactly how the attackers were able to compromise the universities security.
University’s statement:
Within the last 24 hours, the University of Maryland has become aware of a sophisticated data security breach. This is regrettable, and I want to underscore that protecting personally identifiable information is a very high priority for this University.
We are handling this matter with an abundance of caution and diligence. A team of state and federal law enforcement officials, IT professionals and computer forensic specialists are investigating, and we are addressing the matter as we simultaneously and swiftly work to notify all who are affected. All affected persons will be offered one free year of credit monitoring.
As we learn more, we will be forthright and do everything possible to protect and inform our UMD community.
Wallace D. Loh, President
University of Maryland