Payne quickly followed that email with another, asking students to delete what they had received. Soon after that, the students received another email; this time from George Geis, vice dean of the law school.
“Ruth and I both deeply regret this situation and apologize to all of you,” Geis said. “We take the safeguarding of your personal information very seriously and will conduct a full review of our communication practices and our management of confidential student information. We ask that you please do not open this attachment and that you immediately delete this email if you have not done so already.”
The incident in Virginia was the latest example of sensitive student information finding its way into public hands. More than 3 million records were compromised in data security breaches at colleges and universities last year, accounting for ten percent of all data breaches in the United States.
Higher education networks are 300 percent more likely to contain malware than their enterprise and government counterparts, according to OpenDNS, an internet security company.
More so, the release of information at the University of Virginia was just the most recent case of a breach occurring due to university error, rather than a cyberattack.
In February, the names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of 146,000 Indiana University students and recent graduates were exposed after the data was unknowingly kept in an insecure location for nearly a year.
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