Friday, February 05, 2010
Identity theft continues to be a serious problem nationwide, and according to the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center, (ITRC) the economic recession may be a cause in the rise in scams, thievery and hacking. Breaches have hit virtually everywhere, including the federal government, major credit card companies, businesses and higher education institutions. Penn State has experienced computer breaches due to malware. The most recent breach occurred in the Student Aid Office in January, when malware exposed 5,600 records containing Social Security Numbers of current and former students. "The scary part is, you don't have to do anything wrong anymore to infect your computer," said Kathy Kimball, senior director in Penn State's Security Operations and Services Office. "The threat has changed such that you do not need to click on anything, just visit a compromised page." (more)
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Although most offices are winding down for the holidays, Penn State's privacy office remains active. The University currently is working to notify nearly 30,000 individuals about privacy breaches that may have exposed their personally identifying information. Malware infections to University computers caused all of the breaches, which occurred in the Eberly College of Science (7,758 records), the College of Health and Human Development (6,827 records) and one of Penn State's campuses outside of University Park (roughly 15,000 records). (more)
Friday, December 18, 2009
A computer in the Dickinson School of Law that contained 261 Social Security numbers from an archived class list was found to be infected with malware that enabled it to communicate with an unauthorized computer outside the network. As soon as the University became aware of the malicious software on this computer, it immediately was taken off line. Although it cannot be determined with certainty that any data was pulled from the computer by the infectious software, the University's policy is to take a cautionary stance and notify individuals who may have been affected. (more)
Monday, December 14, 2009
Fraudulent e-mails that appear to be coming from University locations such as administrator@psu.edu, webmail@psu.edu and helpdesk@psu.edu continue to be sent to Penn State faculty, staff and students. These e-mails, which ask recipients to provide their individual user ID and password, are part of a variety of dangerous phishing scams, which have targeted all colleges and universities since 2008. The e-mail messages are NOT sent by administrative offices at Penn State. Do not reply to these messages, as they are not legitimate and could lead to the compromise of your access account, your computer or your data. ITS strongly recommends that the messages be deleted. Anyone who already has replied to one of these fraudulent messages should contact Security Operations and Services (SOS) at 814-863-9533. (more)
