After taking almost a month to notify alumni of a computer breach that may have exposed their Social Security numbers and credit-card information, officials at Western Illinois University are promising to improve their response time.
Campus administrators learned of the hacking incident in early June, the day it happened, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. But by the time they had identified the 180,000 people affected by the breach and started firing off e-mail messages to them, three weeks had passed.
Which raises the question: What is an acceptable timetable for a college to tell the public about a hacking incident? Should campus officials release a public statement before notifying people whose information may have been stolen? Tracking down hundreds of thousands of alumni is, after all, a time-consuming job. —Brock Read
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