A security breach at Northwest Florida State College (Niceville) got bigger yesterday, with about 300,000 people across the state potentially affected, according to the Northwest Florida Daily News.  Hackers have obtained access to names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth on 76,500 college students, plus data for more than 200,000 scholarship-eligible students from across the state.  Also about 3,200 employees are also affected and their data may include bank account numbers used for direct deposit.  This breach occurred between May 21 and September 24, 2012.

Back in June the University of Florida (Gainesville) notified 220 former law students that their Social Security numbers had become accessible on the web.  The University previously had a breach this year where 719 individual’s Social Security numbers were exposed on a Florida unclaimed property website.  Prior to that one, 2,047 people’s Social Security numbers or Medicaid ID numbers were included on address labels affixed to letters mailed out.

At the University of North Florida (Jacksonville) in June 2012 the names and Social Security Numbers of 23,246 individuals were compromised by a breach involving server hosting housing contracts.

At the University of Tampa, in March 2012, the Social Security Numbers and Date of Births of more than 6,800 students from the fall semester were in public view of anyone armed with a computer.  There were two other breaches affecting nearly 30,000 individual records with the same kind of information on faculty, students and staff members who had been there between Jan. 2000 and July 2011.

As you can see by this small sampling above, data breaches happen not just because of computer hackers, but also due to paper laying around where the general public has access, letters being mailed out incorrectly, and incidents involving third party vendors.  Everyone and every company is vulnerable today. 

Please give me a call or email me and I’ll assist you in obtaining Cyberliability quotes.

Marie Anello, CPCU, ARM 
Vice President Kahn Carlin & Company Inc. 
3350 South Dixie Highway 
Miami, Florida  33133 
305 446 2271 x 7479 
305 448-3127 
www.kahn-carlin.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/marieanello

PLEASE SEND CERTIFICATE OF INSURANCE REQUESTS TO processing@kahn-carlin.com