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Security
11/29/2005
UC-Berkeley's reaction to 98K+ missing SSNs
On March 11, 2005, someone walked off with a notebook computer containing the Social Security numbers of thousands of applicants and students, current and former, from UC-Berkeley's Graduate Division records. The computer, taken from a restricted office area, contained data from as far back as 1976 to the spring of 2004, including birthdates and/or addresses to match the SSNs and names in about a third of the records. Administrators at UC-Berkeley were reeling from the realization that on the same campus where Nobel laureates push at the boundaries of human endeavor, 98,000-plus SSNs were left exposed on an easily lifted laptop computer. The university quickly provided 'I.D. Alert' Web pages with helpful information about the incident, including a variety of useful resources on identity theft for individuals whose personal information might have been compromised. The Web pages serve as a good model for dealing with at least one aspect of a painful issue. Read more
Can I Have My Wallet and Keys Back, Howard?
A man well ahead of his time, the late technology visionary, strategist, and speaker Howard Strauss was proposing 2015 technologies at the 2003 Syllabus conference, and had audiences still mulling over his comments in 2005. In this Educause Quarterly article responding to Strauss's proposals, Glenn Everett considers potential personal ubiquitous portal technology (PUP) and, indulging in a 'smidgen of paranoia,' poses some questions about future privacy. Read more
'You have no privacy. Get over it.'
Sun Microsystems Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy's haunting words from 1999 still hang over a complex, patchwork landscape of security and privacy issues today. In 'Privacy & Compliance, Better Safe than Sorry,' UCLA's director of Information Technology Policy Kent Wada offered CT readers some insight into the security/ privacy dilemma on campus, along with a few principles to consider as they rally to protect institutional data and wade through the 'alphabet soup' of external regulations: 'Beyond individual state legislation, there is an alphabet soup of federal legislation that colleges and universities must comply with. HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, defines privacy and security standards for the protection of personally identifiable medical information, among other things. GLBA, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, creates obligations to protect customer financial information. Then there is
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