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Last updated on Wednesday, February 26, 2014
(BLOOMINGTON) - Indiana University reported the potential of a data breach that could expose personal information for thousands of students and recent graduates.
Indiana University says certain information about 146,000 students and graduates could be at risk due to a data breach. Those affected will be notified by the university this week.
IU notified the Indiana attorney general Tuesday. The data includes names, addresses and Social Security numbers for about 146,000 students and recent graduates at seven IU campuses who attended the university from 2011 to 2014.
IU says no servers or systems were compromised. The information was accessed by three automated computer data mining applications, called webcrawlers, used to improve Web search capabilities. The university says the data had been stored in an insecure location for 11 months.
IU secured the data after discovering the potential problem. The university says it has no evidence that the files have been viewed or used for inappropriate or illegal purposes.
The University released the following statement:
"This is not a case of a targeted attempt to obtain data for illegal purposes, and we believe the chance of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands as a result of this situation is remote," said James Kennedy, associate vice president for financial aid and university student services and systems. "At the same time, we have moved quickly to secure the data and are conducting a thorough investigation into our information handling process to ensure that this doesn't happen again."
In addition to notifying those affected by the potential exposure, IU is taking the following steps to minimize the potential impact of this incident:
The university will set up a call center to handle questions from anyone whose information was potentially placed at risk as a result of this situation. That center will be operational no later than 8 a.m. EST on Friday, Feb. 28, at 866-254-1484.
A website with information on how to monitor one's credit accounts and with answers to other questions regarding the potential data exposure has been established at https://apps.usss.iu.edu/usss-data-exposure/faq.cfm.
To assist with credit monitoring, IU will supply the social security numbers and names of those potentially affected to all three major credit-reporting agencies
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