COLUMBUS, Ohio – In two separate incidents, thieves stole more than 17,000 records containing the personal information of students and faculty members from Ohio State University (OSU), according to school officials.
The first incident occurred the weekend of March 31 when a hacker broke through a computer firewall and accessed the records of 7,160 former and 6,934 current faculty and staff members. Accessed through the Office of Research database, the information contained names, Social Security numbers, employee ID numbers and birth dates. According to an Associated Press report, that database contained a total of approximately 190,000 current and former university employee records.
In a separate incident reported by OSU officials April 16, a professor’s two laptops containing Social Security numbers and grades of approximately 3,500 current and former chemistry students were stolen from his home. The theft occurred in February, right after the professor transferred his records from the past decade from one laptop to the other.
OSU officials have sent apology letters to employees and students who were affected. They are being offered a year of free credit protection from a private company to guard against potential identity theft.
These latest incidents hearken back to An in depth investigation later narrowed the count down to 173,000 records compromised.
