Despite intensive security measures, institutions are still suffering breaches – sometimes quite painful and costly ones. Since UCLA’s major incident reported this past November, we spoke with EDUCAUSE security expert Rodney Petersen, to get his perspectives and advice for higher education leadership.
CT: The security breach uncovered this past fall at UCLA was among the largest higher education has seen. How does this breach compare to others?
Petersen: Well on the one hand I’m amazed by the interest that this particular breach has generated, but I think there are a couple things that are unique to this incident as compared to other ones. First, is the magnitude of the number of records exposed – 800,000 is by far the largest incident involving a college or university that I’m aware of. And secondly, the fact that the data was contained in a central information system is fairly unique in that the majority of other instances have involved distributed servers or databases maintained by departments or other organizations at the university....
