Higher Education behind on Identity Theft Education

Ever wonder why student identity theft is becoming such a big problem on college campuses? Let’s just say that statistics show that when it comes to identity theft protection, institutions of higher learning aren’t exactly making the grade.

Academic humor aside, the amount of personal information that’s “up for grabs” these days at the nation’s colleges and universities seem to be increasing every day.

The reported data breaches, a root cause of identity theft, in the last eighteen months, and leaves some pretty frightening identity theft statistics.

Apart from the fact that hundreds of millions of personal information have been compromised during that time, one of the most startling revelations is that a near majority of the data breaches have occurred at colleges and universities. Last month (May 2007) alone there were more than 14 reported data breaches at schools, colleges and universities that impact students, faculty and alumni, too. And If you don’t think that this is getting ready to balloon into a much bigger problem, think again. Just take a look at some of the following student identity theft scenarios that have occurred in the last year and half alone:

• A computer worm attacked a computer server at the University of Colorado-Boulder and accessed the financial and personal information of 45,000 college students.
• At Stony Brook University in New York, some 90,000 personal records belonging to staff, students and faculty were exposed. And that personal information remained online for at least two weeks after the “mistake” was first discovered.
• At a large community college in southern Nevada, a computer virus is believed to have exposed the personal records of as many as 197,000 students.
• An enterprising hacker (perhaps after an honorary degree in finance!) broke into a database at the University of Missouri. The files he accessed contained the names and Social Security numbers of more than 22,000 current and former college students and employees.

And last but not least, just to round out the hacker’s honor role, one of the biggest data breaches of 2006 took place at the University of California, Los Angeles. There, online identity thieves broke into a database containing the personal information (again, including Social Security numbers) of more than 800,000 current and former college students, faculty and staff.

What amount of shredding by those that were exposed can protect them against these events?

It’s clear that the academic world has quickly become a playground for identity thieves. And experts seem to have a lot of theories on the huge growth in student identity theft. One article recently described it like this: “The academic culture that embraces the open exchange of information lends itself to identity theft. Add to that diffused tech systems and independent departments and the struggle to stifle breaches becomes even more challenging.”

Maybe one of the real reasons for the on-campus surge in student identity theft is that universities have just become too complacent. Maybe they think they have nothing to lose, especially from the standpoint of student admissions.

What do I mean by that?

A data breach or identity theft can impact the bottom line and share price of a prominent retailer, for example, but how many aspiring college students are going to decide against applying to a certain school — just because that school has had some security problems with personal information?

So let me leave you with one more academic analogy:

Plain and simple, the only way identity thieves will start receiving failing grades, is if we all take bigger steps to protect what we cannot prevent.