Data Breach At Indiana University Puts 146K Students, Recent Graduates At Risk

The personal data of about 146,000 students and recent graduates of Indiana University may have been inadvertently exposed, the Associated Press reported.

Among those affected are people who were enrolled in the university between 2011 and 2014 at seven of its campuses, Reuters reported. The data potentially at risk for disclosure includes names, addresses and Social Security numbers of these students were exposed.

Indiana University "takes the security of all its data, especially the personal information of its students, extremely seriously and apologizes for any concern this issue may cause among our students and their families," John Applegate, executive vice president for university academic affairs, said in a statement.

University officials said the unlike recent high-profile data breaches, no servers or systems were compromised. They said the information was not downloaded by an unauthorized individual looking for specific sensitive data, but rather was accessed by three automated computer data mining applications, called webcrawlers, used to improve Web search capabilities.

University officials discovered late last week that the data had been stored in an insecure location for the past 11 months. The issue was discovered by a staff member of the university registrar's office who accessed the files in question for internal use. The site was immediately locked down, and the information was moved to a secure location the following day.

The university will begin notifying those affected by the potential exposure.

They found no evidence that the files were viewed or used for illegal purposes, the AP reported.

"This is not a case of a targeted attempt to obtain data for illegal purposes, and we believe the chance of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands as a result of this situation is remote," James Kennedy, associate vice president for financial aid and university student services and systems, said in a statement.

On Friday, the university will set up a call center to handle questions from anyone whose information was potentially placed at risk. The phone number is 866-254-1484.