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Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

University of South Carolina notifies 34,000 of computer records hack

The university has had six security breaches since 2006.

The University of South Carolina has started notifying 34,000 people with ties to its College of Education that their personal information might have been accessed in a computer intrusion discovered nearly three months ago.

The data-security breach is the largest of six that USC has reported since 2006. Almost 81,000 records belonging to USC students and employees have been exposed during the past six years.

“That’s a dreadful track record,” said Beth Given, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a San Diego, Calif.-based consumer rights group that tracks breaches.…Read More

Experts: University of Nebraska cyber attack was unsophisticated

There have been more than 30 security breaches in higher education this year.

The hacking of information on more than 650,000 University of Nebraska (UN) students, alumni, parents, and employees—which ranks among higher education’s largest data breaches—had the markings of an amateur job.

The university announced last week that the school’s student information system was hacked, possibly revealing the Social Security numbers, financial aid data, birth dates, course grades, and home addresses of University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the University of Nebraska Kearney, the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture stakeholders dating back to 1985.

UN officials said the centralized information system was exposed for hours before an IT staffer discovered the breach. Since then, UN police have seized computers and electronic equipment from an undergraduate student who might be connected to the data breach.…Read More

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