Once again, a security breach has threatened the online security of students and other individuals. This time, the incident has affected the University of Alaska. As a result of this data breach, the university exposed the personal information of the victims to the potential attackers.
University Of Alaska Suffered Data Breach
The University of Alaska has allegedly faced a security breach affecting its databases. The incident hit the university’s online system consequently leading to a compromise of personal information of students and individuals. News about the University of Alaska data breach surfaced online after the university disclosed the incident in a security notice on their website.
The UA began investigating the issue after receiving reports from users of the UAOnline system in February 2018 with regard to unauthorized access of their accounts. Initially, some spotted a change of passwords on their UAOnline accounts. However, as they continued their investigations, they detected unauthorized access to certain email accounts that led to a breach of sensitive data.
“On or around March 28, 2018, the investigation determined that an unauthorized user also may have accessed certain email accounts between January 31, 2018, and February 15, 2018.”
In the following months, they further determined the impacted individuals and the kind of information affected by this incident. They could establish that the compromised email accounts contained a varying degree of information of the students as well as other users. Nonetheless, the overall breached data includes explicit personal details. As stated in the UA’s notice,
“It may include an individual’s name, government issued identification number, date of birth, digital signature, driver’s license number, usernames and/or passwords, financial account numbers, health and/or health insurance information, passport number, and UA student identification number. For certain individuals, Social Security number may also have been present in the affected email accounts.”
UA Remedied The Breach
Upon discovering the incident, the University of Alaska took the necessary steps to contain the breach. They also involved external experts to investigate the matter. Now that they have determined the extent of the breach, the UA is alerting the impacted users. Nonetheless, they haven’t given any specific or approximate numbers of individuals affected by this data breach.
Earlier this month, we reported a similar breach at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The Georgia Tech data breach allegedly exposed over a million records containing personal information of the students and the staff.