Data Breach at University of Chicago Exposes Social Security Numbers

With the advancements in technology, the aspect of protecting your personal information becomes more of a priority. As it should be, guarding your personal effects, such as your social security number, is a no-brainer for most people. Unfortunately, in recent data breaches cybercrooks target information like Social Security numbers, as they have in a data breach at the University of Chicago recently.

On January 22, 2015, the educational institution discovered a compromise where a cyber-intrusion took place at the University of Chicago. The data breach investigation at the same time uncovered that the exposed database had information belonging to the current and former employees, affiliated students and contracted employees. The data included employee identification numbers, usernames, gender and marital status, and worst of all, social security numbers.

The beach, much like other security infiltrations on servers belonging to large companies or banking institutions, has prompted administrators to send out notifications via letter to inform impacted individuals.

Although it was confirmed that no financial information was obtained during the breach, the theft of social security numbers could lead to financial woes for those affected. With the information in the hands of potential hackers, the damage could come in waves and later become a serious epidemic for those affected.

In an effort to reduce the damages and the potential backlash from the data breach, the University of Chicago is offering free identity protection for one year to all of those affected. The identity protection service is recommended to help prevent fraud attempts using any data that was compromised, including social security numbers.

So far, the total number of individuals affected remains unknown. However, most of those impacted will still be accounted for with the proper information communicated to them as to how they can activate their free identity protection service.