Another state university has had a breach of computer security. University of Northern Iowa Vice President for Business and Finance Tom Schellhardt says the breach was discovered on a university laptop computer. He says they have a new personnel payroll system and they were looking at ways to improve it next year when a virus was discovered on the laptop. The computer had the employment records of approximately six-thousand student employees, faculty and staff.
Schellhardt says they’re notifying everyone, even though they don’t believe any confidential information was compromised. Schellhardt says the virus commonly called a bot is not used to transfer information, but is commonly used to gain access to bandwith on computers. He says they still felt it was important to contact all the employees.
Schellhardt says a fire in November in the Cedar Falls school’s business building contributed to the breach in computer security. He says the laptop computer was purchased the day before the fire and since the fire, the business office has been moved twice. Schellhardt says the security was not as good as it should have been, but they’ve now tightened up the security.
Iowa State University in Ames reported in December that hackers got into one of their computer systems that held employee and donor records. I-S-U officials also believed the records were not compromised, but the hackers were looking to use the school’s computer storage space. Computer experts say hackers often try to gain access to large computer systems like those at a university to use the bandwith space to store pirated movies.