JDSupra among other ezines on the Internet have cataloged the Lewis & Clark College in Portland hack
Basically in March 2023 the administrators or others at the college learned that there was unauthorized access of their computer systems. Today 2 years later a story came out in the 2600 magazine “the Hackers Quarterly”
The article that interested me was “Cybersecurity Can Be Expensive”.
1st. deal with direct and indirect costs of breach. i.e. fixing repairing IT devices and hiring of consultants to help bring everything back to normal(would have been good to have incident response planning).
2nd. One has to learn what happened so time for the forensic experts to deal with things and find out what exactly was accessed. In this case the “family jewels” or in computers… all of the important data of students and employees
3rd. notification of breach has to occur – which only finally completed this year in April.
4th. The possible class action law suits come in. As an employee thought that there wasn’t enough preparation or thought to cybersecurity so now that is in play.
5th lawyers, court costs and any settlements or other fees with possible loss.
What initially was a bad event of computers being secured and fixed, turns into a large mess of lawsuits.
It would have been interesting to see what kind of security policy (if any) there was. because with more preparation a future lawsuit will have less damages.
Asking Claude what we can learn from this breach:
Key lessons from academic institution breaches like this one:
- Educational institutions are high-value targets due to their wealth of personal data, research information, and relatively open network environments.
- Multi-layered security approaches are essential – relying on a single security solution rarely provides adequate protection.
- Regular security assessments and penetration testing can identify vulnerabilities before attackers exploit them.
- Employee/student security awareness training remains one of the most effective preventative measures, as many breaches begin with phishing or social engineering.
- Robust incident response plans allow for quicker containment and recovery, minimizing damage when breaches occur.
- Securing decentralized IT environments common in educational settings requires specialized approaches that balance security with academic freedom.
- Third-party vendor security is critical, as contractors and service providers can create additional vulnerability points.
- Regular data backups stored securely offline provide crucial protection against ransomware attacks.
This is why I provide security assessments and security policies in my store/shop