Boston College Data Breach and Recovery

October 19, 2008 – 1:29 pm

Boston College in March 2005 had to send letters to 100,000 alumni to inform them that a server of theirs had been hacked and that they were subject to identity theft. The server that was locked in a server closet in one of the computer labs held the records of the alumni.

The college already had a incident response team that was setup to control virus outbreaks and other similar attacks. The CIO thought it would be best to get a bigger team together to figure out what exactly had been hacked and what information had been used. After the team was put together they performed computer forensics to discover specificly what information had been accessed. After the analysis they discovered that the database files were not at risk but the files that the students were using, to contact the Alumni for donations, were.

The college immediately sent out letters to all of the 100,000 alumni. The college said that they could of sent out e-mails, but they thought that an e-mail wasn’t as personal as an actual signed letter. They of course had to setup a call center for support for people when they called about their information being at risk. They developed a script that would allow them to help the callers more efficiently with information about the data breach.

The college since then has increased their security. They have installed a Cisco ASA Firewall that is now between the hacker and the information as well as a Nortel VPN server which authenticates users when they try and access the server.

When there is a data breach on a major level you can see what kind of problems they cause. Data breaches cost colleges and businesses lots of money and man hours dealing with them. Boston college did the right thing and dealt with the data breach in a very respectful way. Having said that they could not protect the potential damage that a identity thief could cause. LifeLock has devoted itself to protecting the identities and credit of its members. If you would like a discount on a membership to LifeLock use promotion code, Defense.