Members of the Vanderbilt University community began receiving some unwelcome news last week, as the school issued warnings to more than 7,000 current and former students that their personal information could be at risk. The incident involved a desktop computer containing the students’ names and Social Security numbers stolen from a professor’s locked office.
eSecurity Planet has the story on the Vanderbilt data breach.
A desktop computer was stolen from a Vanderbilt University professor’s locked office last month, exposing the names and social security numbers of 7,174 current and former students.
University officials began warning the affected students last week and the university is offering a year’s worth of credit monitoring and identity protection services to them.
The professor apparently kept a database of his grade book, including social security numbers for undergraduate and graduate students. Vanderbilt officials have subsequently advised academic deans to purge information of this type from their files and asked all professors to discontinue the practice of storing linked student names and social security numbers on their computers.