Officials at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville are investigating a possible breach of secure information, though student information appears to be safe.
UW-Platteville’s Special Assistant to the Chancellor Barbara Daus said although she could not comment on what specific information was compromised, she could say what information was not.
“There was no compromise of our student information system, our student records, our employee information, human resource information or financial information,” Daus said, adding students should not worry about the security of their grades, social security numbers or any other personal information.
Daus declined to give the names of any individuals allegedly involved in the potential breach, but she did say the university’s human resources department is handling the situation internally.
She also said she could neither confirm nor deny claims published in a campus newspaper that an emergency meeting was held for Office of Information Technology staff where it was announced that an employee within the networking department was being removed from his or her position due to something “bad” he or she had done.
A timeline for the investigation as well as whether law enforcement officials will be notified is unknown, Daus said.
According to UW-Madison Information Security Officer Jeff Savoy, UW’s Division of Information Technology has multiple initiatives in place to prevent similar breaches.
“We have a lot of departments on campus with IT personnel, and we have a lot of faculty and staff and data to protect,” Savoy said. “What we’ve done is implement not just one control, but a whole series of controls to lower the risk of this sort of thing happening, because there is always a risk.”
One thing students can do to protect themselves is delete personal information from their computers, Savoy said, adding the problem a lot of times is students not knowing the information is even there.
To combat this problem, UW has a product called Identity Finder available for students to download, Savoy said. Once downloaded, Identity Finder searches your computer for social security numbers, credit cards and other personal information that could put you at risk in the event of the system being hacked.
According to Savoy, the campus’ information technology community works collaboratively to prevent security problems by constantly monitoring the network and immediately reporting any behavior deemed suspicious.
Savoy said UW classifies students’ financial and health information, social security numbers, driver’s license numbers and other personal information as Restricted Data.
“Restricted Data is what we consider our most sensitive data. This is the data that we protect to the fullest extent that we can,” Savoy said.
In the event of a security breach, UW has response procedures and policies that would be followed, Savoy said.
The response policy addresses various types of security problems that can arise and determines on a case-by-case basis how the situation would be investigated, who would be involved and whether law-enforcement officials would need to be contacted, according to Savoy.
“We developed this so that if we do have a situation, we can be consistent on how we handle it,” Savoy said.
For a list of ways to protect you computer and your identity, go to www.cio.wisc.edu/security.
