University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Data Breach (2013)

On November 11, 2013, an information technology manager in the Division of Finance and Administration at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovered that some Division of Facilities Services files inadvertently became accessible on the Internet. These files contained the names and Social Security or Employee Tax Identification numbers, and in some cases, addresses and dates of birth, of some current and former University employees, vendors, and students. The University believes that these files were accessible to the public from July 30, 2013 until November 23, 2013. Upon learning of this incident, the University immediately took steps to block access to the files and began conducting an extensive investigation. Based upon its ongoing investigation, the University believes that on July 30, 2013, during maintenance involving one computer, the safeguards that protected the files against public access were accidentally disabled. The University also learned that as part of Googles automated processes, these files were copied and made publicly accessible.