eSecurity Planet looks at the latest incident that continues an alarming trend in college campus data breaches. This one affected a network of community colleges in North Carolina, and appears to have exposed thousands of patrons’ driver’s licenses and Social Security numbers.
Officials for a community college system in North Carolina this week acknowledged that someone managed to hack his or her way into a server housing the Social Security and driver’s license numbers of more than 51,000 library patrons.
The data breach affected students and local residents who used computers in the libraries at 25 separate campuses throughout the Tar Heel State in the past year.
A spokeswoman for the community college system said officials are in the process of notifying all users whose numbers were on the server and, so far, it appears the hacker has not used the personal data for nefarious purposes.
“We regret this situation has occurred, and we apologize to those with information on the server,” Saundra Williams, a senior vice president with the Community College System, said in a statement. “Our colleges and our system office are making every effort to ensure that personal information is permanently removed from our records.”