Adam On…

In the first quarter of 2008, educational institutions have experienced 59 reported incidents. This is almost double the first quarter count from 2007 (32 incidents) and over three times as many as the first quarter 2006 (17 incidents). The 59 incidents reported is just shy of half (42%) of the total number of breaches reported in 2007.

The most common type of incident in the first quarter of 2008? Anyone familiar with the results of last year’s ESI YiR should find it no surprise that Unauthorized Disclosures tops the list. With 29 out of the 59 reported incidents, Unauthorized Disclosure easily beats out Theft (11 incidents), Penetration (9 incidents), Loss (4 incidents), Employee Fraud (3 incidents) and Impersonation (2 incidents).

It seems that this increase in breaches in not unique to higher education either. According to a press release by the Identity Theft Resource Center, breaches and security incidents reported in the first quarter of 2008 is more then double the number of incidents reported in the first quarter of 2007. In addition, the 2008 first quarter incident count is more then 1/3 of the total incidents reported in 2007.

The most common industries for a breach? Accord to the ITRC, Business tops the list with 35.9% of the reported incidents. Business is followed by Educational with 25.2%, Government/Military with 18%, Medical/Healthcare with 13.8%, and Banking/Credit/Financial with 7.2%.

(I should point out here that ESI has been able to identify incidents that were not contained in the ITRC count.)