Yet another educational institution has had a data breach. This time, it is Harvard University and thousands of personal files have been compromised:

“…Harvard says about 10,000 of last year’s applicants may have had their personal information compromised, with 6,600 having their Social Security numbers exposed.”

link: Harvard says hacker exposed info of students

With the social security numbers breached, it is imperative to have a credit freeze. Access to such a data base is ideal for an identity thief because the student applicants most likely would not have much financial debt and a clear criminal history. There is no mention in reports whether there was encryption protection for these files.

Catherine Forsythe
Director of Operations
FlyingHamster: http://flyinghamster.com/

Tags: hackers, data breach, privacy, security, identity theft, encryption, harvard university