A seemingly innocent mistake has put more than 40,000 former University of Hawaii students’ at risk after a faculty member posted their names, Social Security numbers and other personal information on the school’s website.
As eSecurity Planet reports, this latest serious data breach is the second one this year for the University of Hawaii and puts a spotlight on how it and other universities continue to haphazardly protect student, faculty and employee data.
The data, which was to be used for a university-sponsored survey, was available online until the security gaffe was brought to university officials’ attention on Oct. 18 by the Liberty Coalition, a nonprofit, consumer privacy and data protection organization based in Washington.
For the second time in less than a year, University of Hawaii officials are dealing with another massive data breach that exposed students’ and alumni most sensitive personal information for almost a year.
This time around, university officials said a faculty member in December accidentally uploaded the names, Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates and educational data of more than 40,000 alumni to an unencrypted web server from the university’s West Oahu (UHWO) campus.
