Dive Brief:
- The University of Maryland was once again the target of a cyber attack, just a month after another breach affected 287,580 people.
- The cyber intrusion into the university's network was discovered on March 15, and within 36 hours, the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, university police, and university IT security staff had corralled the problem.
- This hack impacted only one person, a senior university official.
Dive Insight:
Did this senior university official click on something he or she shouldn’t have? The university does not believe the two breaches are related, but to prevent future hacking like the latest incident, the school took down many of its websites over the weekend to transfer information to a different website. The first cyber security breach compromised names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and university ID numbers of each of each individual in the university’s records. Among other steps the university is taking, the school’s new cybersecurity task force is evaluating cybersecurity consultants to strengthen cyber intrusion prevention. The university has also changed all of its database passwords and closed the pathways used in the two security breaches.