Information Technology & Identity Theft Concerns & Information Assurance

Community College Loses Data Device with Student and Worker Info

October 21, Knoxville News Sentinel – (Tennessee) Roane State data device with student, worker info missing. A data storage device containing the names and Social Security numbers of more than 10,000 people has been missing since October 12 when it was stolen from a Roane State Community College employee’s car while it was parked off-campus in Knox County, college officials announced today. The college has issued an “ID alert” on its Web site, sent letters to anyone who may be affected by the theft and has notified major consumer reporting agencies. The device was used for work-related purposes. “Immediately after the theft, we did not want to release information that would interfere with the investigation,” said Roane State vice president. “Once it became clear an arrest, or the recovery of the device, was not imminent, we informed those affected as quickly as possible.” The device contained the names and Social Security numbers of 10,941 people, including 1,194 current or former employees and 9,747 current or former students. The device also contained the Social Security numbers only, but no names, for 5,036 current or former students. No academic records were on the device. The community college has posted more information here, www.roanestate.edu/idalert. The college has also set up a hot line to handle questions from those affected by the theft. The number is 865-882-4688 or toll-free 1-866-462-7722, extension 4688.

October 4, Newsday – (New York) E-mail error sends out students’ Social Security numbers. Suffolk Community College has agreed to pay a company for the next year to monitor the credit of 300 students whose last names and Social Security numbers were mistakenly listed in an attachment to an e-mail sent to those students last month. The college vice president, said Sunday there is “no indication” that any of the personal information has been misused, but added that the college decided “it was the right step to take the extra precaution” to minimize students’ risk of identity theft. The error, said the vice president, occurred late in the day September 17 and was discovered the next morning. She said college officials immediately shut down the server and took steps to retrieve unopened messages and attachments. She could not say how much of the personal information was recovered or whether anyone was disciplined for the security breach. The vice president declined to comment on whether the college would be liable if student’s information was misused, saying such circumstances are “conjecture” at this point. The same day the college learned of the problem, the vice president said school officials mailed a letter to inform students of the problem and alert them to immediate steps they could take to protect their personal data, including registering an alert with the three companies that monitor credit information.

Points for Consideration:

• Does your department, school, or district have information and IT device controls and protocols for handling (physical, virtual, & human) and safe storage?
• Should this personal information become, lost, stolen, or compromised does your organization know what to do? What specifics steps would you take should an information compromise occur?
• Getting rid of old cell phones, zip disks, CDROMs, and computers that may contain personal information need to be considered when discarding items.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY CAN BE A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD IF YOU AREN'T AWARE OF THE RISK.

Teen Suicide Due To Sexting

THE DANGERS OF TEEN AGE TEXTING and ONLINE

In September 2009, a 13-year-old girl in Florida named Hope Witsell hanged herself. Raised in a rural Florida suburb, she was the only child of a church-going couple who met in the post office where they're both employed.  Hope's suicide became the second with a clear link to sexting and the peer torture that can follow from it. At the end of seventh grade last spring, Hope sent a photo of her breasts to a boy she liked, and the picture went viral at her school. "Tons of people talk about me behind my back and I hate it because they call me a whore!" Hope wrote in her journal before her death.

Jessie Logan, who was 18 and lived outside Cincinnati, hanged herself last July after nude photos she sent to her boyfriend circulated widely among teenagers she knew. What explains this awful chain of events that leads to tragedy? Is this just the usual bullying, only with different tools, or a distinct harm unto itself? And are these isolated cases or legitimate cause for the wider uproar over sexting?

Points To Consider:
With each technological change in our student's lives, we must consider the positive and negative consequences. Parents need to monitor, and if warranted, modify the texting features of their kids to ensure their kids are doing the right things at the right times.

High Wind Gusts can create Natural Hazards that can Kill or Injure

HIGH WINDS CAN INJURE AN KILL, NOT JUST HURRICANES AND TORNADOES!!!!

High wind gusts knock over hydraulic lift and kill a student taping a college football practice.
A 20 yr old college student (Declan Sullivan) who was videotaping a Notre Dame football practice was killed when high winds knocked over the hydraulic scissor lift he was standing upon. The lift was used as a platform to provide an overhead vantage point to film the practice. According to sources, the directions that came with the lift warned against its use during high winds. The wind gusts caused towels and a Gatorade cooler to fly into the air as well as the netting on the goal post to bend. Sullivan even tweeted that it was "terrifying" during the 51 mph wind gusts before he was killed. Sullivan died en route to the hospital in South Bend Indiana.

Strong winds knock over a 10 foot high brick wall at a school killing a construction worker.
In July 2010, a storm in the small town of Edgerton, Ohio destroyed a small town and damaged homes. In August 2010, a construction worker was killed at a northwest Ohio school construction site when a brick wall fell on him following some strong winds that blew through the area. It was undetermined if the previous storm weakened the wall or if it was strong winds that day caused it to collapse.


 Commentary:

• Unless we receive a dangerous weather warning, we typically don't pay much heed to bad weather. It is important for all school personnel to develop an ALL HAZARD MINDSET to identify what CAN or MIGHT cause injury, damage, or death to people in our school community. While not being paranoid, it is important to THINK and PLAN WORST CASE SCENARIO when it comes to school preparedness. 
• Hope for the best, PLAN for the Worst, and you will be READY for anything in between.
• Following the storm in Ohio, was their a structural safety assessment conducted at the school / construction site to identify hazards? 
• The RECOVERY PHASE of an incident (June storm) can often get overlooked, but the inability to recover from an incident can create conditions for another hazardous incident.
• The GIFT of FEAR: Imagine if Declan Sullivan listened to his inner voice that caused him to tweet he was terrified and he got down from the hydraulic lift instead of tweeting his concern. Often times we can only lessen the hazards (seen and unseen) by degrees, but that might make all of the difference. In the preparedness business, it is often said, "you make your luck" .

WEATHER CAN KILL, IF YOU DON'T PAY ATTENTION TO IT.

Middle School Kids on Facebook...are you kidding me???

Our local newspaper ran a story, "Middle Schoolers report Facebook sex tape requests". I don't know how familiar you are with social networking sites such as FACEBOOK or MySpace, but you need to be.  It is 2010 and Web 2.0 technology is here to stay. Like any tool, the Social Networking Sites (SNS) are in and of themselves not bad, but it is HOW they can be misused and by WHOM which is the concern. An adult from a foreign country electronically entered the homes of dozens of middle school students because their parents knowingly or unknowingly left the VIRTUAL DOORS open to their kids safety. This perverted adult asked kids through Facebook (SNS) to film themselves doing inappropriate things and send it to him.
          It is my strong opinion that middle school kids should not be on social networking sites (SNS), and that high school students can be on social networking sites ONLY IF MONITORED by parents. After the age of 18, then they are adults but prior to that they need to be electronically supervised. For the high schooler, no access for parent = no access to SNS, period. (More on SNS on future blogs). Some topics for discussion:

• This foreign adult attempted to contact over 100 middle school students both male and female.
• He may have used a search engine based upon a story he saw in an online posting or newspaper article.
• MANY OF THE MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS contacted MISREPRESENTED THEMSELVES AS 18 year old ADULTS.

ON A POSITIVE NOTE:  This was reported after a cyber crime presentation was given a local group, Education Connection (from Litchfield, CT) at the middle school. The students reported it and an investigation was initiated. This is a great example of how education can be used to teach the vulnerabilities and associated responsibility that must be used in conjunction with the Internet to keep our children safe.