USC hit with another personal data breach

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20130629/NEWS10/306290012/USC-hit-another-personal-data-breach

By Andrew Shain
GreenvilleOnline.com
June 29, 2013

The University of South Carolina is dealing with another data breach while 
it continues work to eliminate unnecessary use of Social Security numbers.

USC sent letters this week to 6,300 students whose personal information, 
including Social Security numbers, could have been on a laptop stolen from 
the physics department.

The school's new cyber-security program is more than a year from 
completion, USC officials said. And even when it's in place, hackers and 
thieves might get valuable data from the school where more than 80,000 
devices -- from desktops to smartphones -- connect to computer systems 
across the university's eight campuses.

''No one is immune to attack and with that, we have to be aware and 
realistic that the odds are against us,'' said Marcos Vieyra, USC's chief 
information security officer. ''There are a lot of attackers. We have to 
be perfect every day, and all they have to do is find one hole, one 
vulnerability, and they're in.''

The breach was the university's seventh in seven years. More than 87,000 
records belonging to USC students and employees have been exposed since 
2006.

[...]



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