Virus on UNCG computer puts employees' data at risk
A virus on a University of North Carolina at Greensboro computer may have allowed an unauthorized person access to personal information of university employees.How many victims? Unspecified.
What type of personal information? Information used to process the institution’s payroll, including included names, Social Security numbers, direct deposit routing and bank account information.
Details: The situation was detected on Dec. 11 when a payroll employee received a notification of a virus alert while attempting to access data. There is evidence that the virus has been on the workstation since April 2008.
What was the response? Notification was sent to UNCG’s faculty, staff and student employees, UNCG technicians took the workstation offline to clean it, a website and phone number were created for employees. The university is notifying credit reporting agencies, and also notified the Consumer Protection Division of the North Carolina Attorney General’s office.
Quote: “This is a very, very serious matter, and the university is taking all the necessary steps to assure the security of our employees’ personal and business information,” said Vice Chancellor for Business Affairs Reade Taylor.
Source: UNCG.edu, UNCG: University News, “UNCG Discovers Security Breach; Employees Being Notified,” Dec. 15, 2008.
