A newsletter was posted on Maryland’s official site by President Wallace Loh of the University. It stated a database was breached on Feb. 18 that was comprised of 309,079 records of faculty, staff, students and associated people from the College Park and Shady Grove schools who’ve been granted a University ID since 1998.
Loh explained he was informed about the breach by Brian Voss, Vp of Information Technology, and that data accessed by the attackers involved name, Social Security number, date of birth, and University identification number. Nothing else was affected, Loh added, which includes financial, academic, health, or contact details.
“With the assistance of experts, we are handling this matter with an abundance of caution and diligence,” Loh wrote in the press release. “Appropriate state and federal law enforcement authorities are currently investigating this criminal incident. Computer forensic investigators are examining the breached files and logs to determine how our sophisticated, multi-layered security defenses were bypassed. Further, we are initiating steps to ensure there is no repeat of this breach.”
The University added it’s offering 12 months of free credit monitoring to everyone affected. They also provided a FAQ on their site, you can access that here.
