14 DAY TRIAL // Personal information of about 163,000 employees, students, applicants and alumni (some of whom graduated in 1983) of Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana, has been exposed as a result of a data breach.
In a police investigation in California, a flash drive was found on a suspect containing information about some Butler University employees.
After the police contacted Butler officials regarding the finding of the sensitive data, an investigation was started to determine the unauthorized access to the institution’s systems and the info that could have been exposed.
The forensics team found indications of a breach between November 2013 and May 2014, and the data exposed consists of names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and bank-account information.
The university started sending notifications to all individuals whose data was exposed to unauthorized parties.
In order to help protect the affected individuals from identity and financial theft incidents, the university offers them a free membership for one year to a service created to detect misuse of personal information.
The recipients of the letter are provided with all the necessary instructions to contact and activate the service, which provides a free copy of the credit report.
Such notifications have become more frequent lately, but in this case, some of the affected parties may not receive the message, especially those whose data was on the record for a very long time, because the University may not have updated addresses for them.
Also, if the incident occurred in late 2013, it means the hackers had at least half a year to take advantage of the information.