Breach, Data Security

UC Berkeley data breach impacts about 1,600 individuals

University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is notifying roughly 1,600 individuals that their personal information may have been compromised in a data breach that involved unauthorized access to servers and databases in the campus's Real Estate Division.

How many victims? About 1,600. 

What type of personal information? About 1,300 Social Security numbers and roughly 300 credit card numbers were among the information.

What happened? The breach involved unauthorized access to servers used to support a number of Real Estate Division programs.

What was the response? The affected servers were removed from the network. The Real Estate Division has implemented a number of new protocols and processes to prevent a similar incident from occurring again. All impacted individuals are being notified, and offered a free credit monitoring services.

Details: The breach was discovered in September. The data covers a time period from the early 1990s to May. Most of the impacted individuals are current or former campus employees, but individuals with companies doing business with the Real Estate Division were also affected.

Quote: “There is no evidence that hackers actually downloaded and used the personal information,” Janet Gilmore, a UC Berkeley spokesperson, wrote in the notification posted to the website.

Source: newscenter.berkeley.edu, “Campus alerts individuals to IT security breach,” Dec. 15, 2014.

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