Educause Security Discussion mailing list archives
Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN
From: Morrow Long <morrow.long () YALE EDU>
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2010 16:29:13 -0500
Some instances where the school needs an SSN for a student:Federal, State and other financial aid - on the FAFSA, to track student loans, grants and similar equivalent processes
US Citizenship verification - not a federal requirement but some states require their public higher ed institutions to verify US citizenship
Work study or other cases of student employment on campusI found the following great web page from St. Petersburg College on just what they use student's SSN #s for:
www.spcollege.edu/webcentral/btw/ssn.htm Morrow On Nov 8, 2010, at 4:12 PM, Dan Peterson wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1I agree that High-Ed does report things that private industry does not;however, why does Higher-Ed need the student SSN in the first placeAll the school I have ever been at when you complain you can get a studentID. - -- Dan - -----Original Message----- From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Mike Lococo Sent: Monday, November 08, 2010 12:23 PM To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Universities riskiest place for SSN On 11/08/2010 02:32 PM, Eric Case wrote:The original post,http://blogs.mcafee.com/consumer/identity-theft/top-ten-most- dangerous-place s-to-leave-your-social-security-number, says, "Robert Siciliano, on behalf of McAfee, analyzed data breaches published by the Identity Theft Resource Center, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the Open Security Foundation that involved Social Security number breaches from January 2009 - October 2010 to reveal the riskiest places to lose your ID." It is unclear if they ranked by number of records/breach or number of breaches.My read is that the number in parens at the end of each top-10 entry is abreach-count (it's certainly not a record-count), which is used as theranking/sorting key. Since the data is from a report covering 2009-2010,it's fairly recent.If one is looking for a methodology flaw that excuses Higher-Ed's number-one spot on the list, it's probably the failure to account for our culture ofopenness. You don't see other industries announcing a breach and thensaying "there was no evidence of unauthorized access, but we're calling this a breach and announcing it anyway", which is fairly common from higher-ed institutions. We might get dwarfed on record count as-well, but that youcan't see that data without buying the original report. Cheers, Mike Lococo -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP Desktop 9.9.1 (Build 287) Charset: us-ascii wj8DBQFM2GfF5chTNtilRz8RAn4wAJ9gymPQEqAIIVg01pDhBOhXqdy5zwCeLTDC Hn1Gf7GfUsZ6SRGyz8+NSdM= =vdAe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Current thread:
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN, (continued)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Tracy Mitrano (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Eric Case (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Mike Lococo (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Dan Peterson (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Steven Alexander (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Mclaughlin, Kevin (mclaugkl) (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Judith House (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN John Ladwig (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Allison F Dolan (Nov 09)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Tracy Mitrano (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Moore, Frank (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Morrow Long (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN David Escalante (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Dan Peterson (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Kevin Shalla (Nov 09)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN John Ladwig (Nov 09)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Jeffrey Schiller (Nov 09)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Kimberly Heimbrock (Nov 09)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Willis Marti (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Hoag, Martin (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Dan Peterson (Nov 08)
- Re: Universities riskiest place for SSN Dexter Caldwell (Nov 09)