<h1 style="font-weight: normal;"><font size="2">Major College Software Vendor Puts Students at Many Campuses at Risk of Identity Theft</font></h1><font size="-1">Thursday, April 24, 2008</font><br><a href="http://chronicle.com/free/2008/04/2619n.htm">http://chronicle.com/free/2008/04/2619n.htm</a><br>
<p>At least 18 colleges are scrambling to inform tens of thousands of
students they are at risk of having their identities stolen after
SunGard, a leading software vendor, reported that a laptop owned by one
of its consultants was stolen.</p>
<p>The complete extent of the problem is still unknown, though many of
the campuses that have been identified are in Connecticut and New York.
The laptop contained students' names and Social Security numbers. In
some cases, the exposed data also included financial aid information,
e-mail addresses, birth dates, and driver-identification numbers.</p>
<p>Now college officials are accusing SunGard of waiting too long—about
one month—to inform them of the security breach. The Connecticut
attorney general has opened an inquiry into the incident. And there are
widespread concerns that SunGard may not be adequately protecting
college data.</p>
<p>SunGard Higher Education, the division of the company that employed
the consultant, said it found out on March 13 that the laptop was
stolen. Colleges said they weren't told of the theft until the second
week of April. A spokeswoman for the company, Laura Kvinge, said that
was not an undue delay, noting that the company needed to analyze
backup data to determine the affected colleges before alerting them.</p>
<p>SunGard has set up a <a href="http://www.sungardhe.com/laptoptheft">Web page</a>
and a 24-hour toll-free telephone number to answer customers' questions
about the incident, and has offered to pay for one year of credit
monitoring for affected students. </p>
<p>That has not mollified Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut's attorney
general. "We are extremely troubled by the delay in alerting us about
the breach in security," Mr. Blumenthal said in a telephone interview
on Wednesday. "SunGard waited about a month, which is inexcusable."</p>
<p>M. Jodi Rell, Connecticut's governor, in a written statement, also faulted SunGard for the delay.</p>[...]<br><br>