Indiana University authorities say the personal data of 140,000 present and former students has been breached.
The data includes names, addresses and Social Security numbers of those students who were in the IU system between 2011 and 2014, CNN reported on Wednesday.
Servers and systems weren’t compromised. But the students’ files were accessed multiple times by automated data-mining applications, university officials said.
“This is not a case of a targeted attempt to obtain data for illegal purposes, and we believe the chance of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands as a result of this situation is remote,” said James Kennedy, the school’s associated vice president for university student services and systems, CNN reported.
“At the same time, we have moved quickly to secure the data and are conducting a thorough investigation into our information handling process to ensure that this doesn’t happen again,” he said.
The state’s attorney general was told of the breach on Tuesday, campus officials said.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.