As per ongoing investigation of an information security training firm, a stolen external hard drive has led to the personal information of more than 15,000 people formerly and currently associated with California State University at Fresno athletic department.
The hard drive was found to be missing on January 12, a theft the school believes most likely took place in late December during its winter break.
The Porterville Recorder reported that the drive carried the information on 15,000 people, 300 currently at the school with the remainder being former student athletes, sports camp attendees, and athletic corporation employees.
The information exposed includes names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, full or last four digits of Social Security numbers, credit-card numbers, driver’s license numbers, passport numbers, user names and passwords, health-insurance numbers, and personal health information, an information security training researcher of the firm said.
The university said the stolen information has not been accessed or misused so far. An investigation into the break-in and data breach is ongoing.
“Fresno State has no reason to believe that any of the information on the hard drive has been accessed or misused,” Fresno States’ statement said.
“Though this appears to be an isolated incident, we take any data theft very seriously and will review campus policies to ensure we have best procedures in place when it comes to security of confidential and sensitive data,” chief information officer Orlando Leon said.
By recommendation of information security training experts, the university has begun notifying those involved by letter and is offering free credit monitoring and recommends those included to keeping an eye on credit card usage.
Working as a cyber security solutions architect, Alisa focuses on application and network security. Before joining us she held a cyber security researcher positions within a variety of cyber security start-ups. She also experience in different industry domains like finance, healthcare and consumer products.
