Texas university suffers breach, thousands affected

The personal information of nearly 18,000 individuals was exposed in a breach targeting McMurry University in Abilene, Texas.

The incident came to the university’s attention on June 20th this summer, when it said it became aware of “suspicious activity” involving its network.

The subsequent investigation determined that an unknown actor accessed some of McMurry’s systems and copied certain files between June 18th and June 20th.

“As a result, McMurry conducted a detailed review of the affected files to determine the types of information present and to whom the information relates,” the private school said in a notice letter to those who had been affected.

It took nearly five months for McMurry to complete its analysis of the data, which it finished on November 15th. It concluded that the information that may have fallen to the wrong hands included names and social security numbers.

In addition to providing credit monitoring services to individuals whose personal information was potentially affected by the incident, the university said it was also working to implement additional safeguards and training to its employees.

Academic institutions are frequent targets of malicious actors, as they handle large amounts of personal and highly valuable information regarding faculty and students. Breaches in recent years include an attack on Carnegie Mellon University and on Indiana University that exposed 250,000 user records.

Earlier this year, it was also reported that data linked to several top schools, including Princeton University, Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and Duke University was being sold on the dark web.