The University of Maryland suffered a data breach Tuesday, in which hackers made off with records for more than 30,000 current and former students.
According to a release from university president Wallace Loh, names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and University identification numbers were all stolen.
"But the school believes financial and health information is safe. The breach affects students dating back as far as 1998." (Via WTVR)
"Many are wondering how something like this could happen. The university does have a computer forensics team working to figure that out. Students are worried about the implications." (via NBC Washington)
Maryland is now, unfortunately, in the same club of a lot of prominent universities.
The New York Times reports universities have been steady targets for hackers in recent years. In 2012 alone, more than 50 universities including Harvard, Stanford, Cornell and Princeton suffered breaches that compromised personal information.
Maryland's president said the college needs to do more to harden its systems against attacks.
"We recently doubled the number of our IT security engineers and analysts. Obviously, we need to do more and better, and we will." (Via Los Angeles Times)
The university is offering a year of free credit monitoring to those affected by the breach.
See more at newsy.com.
About the Author
