Stupidity Trumps Hacker Ability - Twenty-Four Seven Security

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February 12, 2008
Stupidity Trumps Hacker Ability

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, colleges suffered more data breaches in 2007 than 2006, and most of those data spills were caused by mistakes or property theft than were caused by hackers.

Colleges reported 112 computer security incidents in 2007, nearly double the 65 incidents from 2006, according to Adam D. Dodge and his Educational Security Incidents Web site. The total number of incidents was 139, as some universities had more than one security incident (can you say tenure?), up from a total of 83 the year before.

Approximately 100 of the incidents in 2007 were Social Security number being exposed, and which involved a total of 1,085,708 records, which was actually down from 2,268,580 SS#s being exposed in 2006 in 66 incidents. Is it starting to seem to you that in a couple of years every American born will have more than one person using their SS#?

Most important, though, is the findings that hackers were not responsible for the spike in incidents, as the number of actual network attacks remained flat, at 33. So what remains the true data threat is not something new and invented, but as old as computing itself -- the data prat-fall.