November can’t end soon enough for computer-security officials at Montana State University. In the past week, they’ve discovered three separate data breaches, according to the Billings Gazette.
The first incident took place last Friday, when officials determined that a stolen data-storage device included the Social Security numbers of 216 students and employees who had lived on campus recently. That same day, the university also discovered that a spreadsheet with 42 other Social Security numbers was accessible from Montana State’s Web site.
As data-security officials looked into the spreadsheet snafu, they found another document, containing sensitive data for 13 people in the university’s computer-science department, also sitting online.
The steady succession of security breaches may have left campus officials a bit red-faced, but it’s worth noting that the university will have to send warning letters to less than 300 people — a far cry from the tens of thousands of potential identity-theft victims that some colleges have had to notify. —Brock Read
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