Of the 28 data breaches made public by U.S. educational institutions last year, the University of Maryland, College Park’s was the largest, with 309,079 records affected, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.
The causes of the breaches varied widely, although hacking appears to be the most common and destructive. The University of Maryland’s and North Dakota University’s (whose data breach affected more than 290,000 records) were caused by database hackers. Riverside Community College’s data breach was the result of an employee inadvertently emailing a file to the wrong email address. At Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College, an unencrypted laptop computer was stolen.
In most of the cases, the information exposed included Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and other data of current and former students, faculty and staff.
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Below are the names of the U.S. educational institutions that reported largest data breaches in 2014.
- University of Maryland, College Park; 309,079 records
- North Dakota University; 290,780 records
- Butler University; 163,000 records
- Indiana University; 146,000 records
- Arkansas State University College of Education and Behavioral Science’s Department of Childhood Service; 50,000 records
- Riverside Community College; 35,212 records
- Iowa State University; 29,780 records
- Orangeburg-Calhoun Technical College; 20,000 records
- University of Wisconsin-Parkside; 15,000 records
- Seatlle Public Schools; 8,000 records
