Kirkwood Community College publicised on Monday 8th April that they have become another victim of a data breach that has compromised data belonging to 125,000 people. It has been disclosed that the hackers successfully targeted and gained access to an online database that is found on their website on 13th March. This database that was successfully accessed by the hackers contained information such as names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth and contact information for those who had applied for credit classes from February 2005 to March 2013.
Members of the Kirkwood Community College staff first became suspicious of an attack when they noticed a spike in activity. They immediately shut down the website and reported the suspected data breach to the FBI.
Kirkwood Community College was keen to stress that no financial details were held in this database and that there are no signs of identity theft since the data breach. The College has also confirmed that letters have been sent out to those who they believe may have been affected. They have also offered assistance from identity theft experts for the affected people and are willing to pay for one year’s worth of credit monitoring alerts.
Kristie Fisher who is the vice President of Student Services stated, “It’s very specific to applications to college credit classes. So, it’s not continuing education, it’s not financial aid, it’s not student records from the standpoint of transcripts or grades.”
Fisher later added, “We can’t even say with certainty that they downloaded anything, but we know they successfully accessed the database.”
Brett Villeneuve who is a student at Kirkwood Community College revealed his displeasure and disappointment at receiving a letter notifying him that his details may have been compromised.
Villeneuve stated, “The damage is done. There’s nothing that can be done to resolve it now. I trusted this school with this information and they failed. They let me down and that’s a disappointment.”
Alex Gibney who is also a student at the College has a much more relaxed view towards the whole incident.
Gibney stated, “It’s not terribly concerning. I’ve had different things come up where information may have been compromised before, but it hasn’t really affected me yet. So until it does, I don’t think I will be too worried.”
Kirkwood Community College is the latest of an ever increasing list of companies and organisations to have suffered from a data breach because of the actions of hackers. Hackers are becoming more prevalent with their attacks and are becoming more sophisticated with their methods. Therefore the importance of having a robust backup solution in place is becoming more essential in case hackers manage to gain access to your systems and delete or modify critical business data.
Are you concerned of your systems being hacked? Do you currently have a robust backup solution in place in the event of malicious tampering?
