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UNC employees criticize university’s response to major data breach

Many UNC employees are still upset over last fall’s data breach [1], when the personal information housed by the University of more than 6,000 individuals was made publically accessible due to an oversight. Some have criticized UNC’s response to the situation saying it took too long to notify those who were affected, Chapelboro reports.

Charles Streeter, Chair of the UNC Employee Forum, shared the frustrations of his colleagues at a Board of Trustees committee meeting Wednesday. He urged officials to consider tighter University-wide ITS mandated security measures.

“They do not feel secure anymore. Their sense of security in regards to their data has been lost,” Streeter said.

After an initial investigation, the University found that on July 30, during maintenance involving one computer, the safeguards that protected the files against public access were accidentally disabled and published on the internet.

The files that were exposed for almost four months contained information such as names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth of some current and former employees, vendors, and students.

A University official learned in November that some of those files were accessible on the Internet. Within two weeks, Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Chris Kielt  said the files weren’t online anymore.

Read more [2]