Late last week, officials at the University of California Berkeley notified 80,000 people of a cyberattack on a system that compromised the Social Security numbers and bank account numbers of current students, former students, faculty members and vendors, Reuters reported.
In a statement posted by the university on Friday (Feb. 26), public affairs correspondent Janet Gilmore said:
“The campus has no evidence that any unauthorized individual actually accessed, acquired or used any personal information; however, it is informing those potentially impacted so they can be alert to signs of any possible misuse of their information and take advantage of credit protection services the campus is offering free of charge.”
The cyberattack took place during Dec. 2015, with the school confirming that cybercriminals gained access to its Berkeley Financial System (BFS), which is a software application used for the campus’ financial management.
Of the total number of people potentially affected by the breach, the University of California Berkeley said 57,000 are current and former students, nearly 18,800 are former and current employees and 10,300 are vendors who work with the school.
“The security and privacy of the personal information provided to the university is of great importance to us,” Paul Rivers, UC Berkeley’s chief information security officer, explained in a statement. “We regret that this occurred and have taken additional measures to better safeguard that information.”
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The school said it completed identifying the names of all those whose information may have been compromised and sent letters with information about free credit monitoring, insurance and other resources.
