(TNS) — A data breach at the University of Connecticut early last year compromised personal information, including Social Security numbers, of an unspecified number of people at the private liberal arts college in New London, officials said Wednesday. Announced.
“The University of Connecticut conducts thorough forensic investigations, including leading cybersecurity experts, to respond to data security incidents in which unauthorized persons access or retrieve certain files stored on University computer systems. We are conducting an investigation,” the university said in a statement.
The breach was discovered in March 2023, and university officials contacted law enforcement and took steps to “remediate” the problem, as well as opening an independent investigation, the statement said.
Officials said none of the personal data exposed during the incident was believed to have been misused as a “direct result” of the breach, but the university is taking additional precautions to ensure that all affected students said it would provide free credit monitoring services.
The statement did not say how many people were affected or whether their data was exposed as a result of the breach. A university spokesperson declined Thursday to comment on that or why it took nearly a year to disclose the breach, citing the ongoing investigation.
Located on the banks of the Thames River, the University of Connecticut enrolls 1,737 students and has 187 full-time professors.
The data breach is the latest involving a higher education institution in Connecticut. The personal data of more than 800,000 Connecticut residents was exposed as part of a nationwide data breach by a Denver-based wellness program that counts Yale New Haven Health as a customer.
In 2019, a cyberattack at UConn Health compromised the data of 326,000 patients. UConn announced another breach of its email system last July, but no student, faculty or staff personal or financial information was compromised.
©2024 the Connecticut Post, Bridgeport, CT. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
