Harvard University over the weekend disclosed a data breach impacting the personal information of alumni, donors, students, parents, staff, and other individuals.
The incident was discovered on November 18 and involved unauthorized access to systems used by its Alumni Affairs and Development department, the higher-education institution said in a Saturday notice.
Harvard said that it immediately blocked the attacker’s access to the impacted systems and that it launched an investigation in collaboration with third-party cybersecurity experts and law enforcement.
“We are continuing to closely monitor and have no evidence of further unauthorized access,” the university said on Saturday.
The potentially compromised information, Harvard said, includes data related to fundraising and alumni engagement activities, such as addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, donation details, event attendance, and other biographical information.
“The information systems that were accessed do not generally contain Social Security numbers, passwords, payment card information, or financial account numbers,” the institution said.
Potentially impacted individuals, it said, include alumni, alumni spouses and partners, widows and widowers of alumni, current students, parents of current and former students, donors, and faculty and staff.
On November 22, Harvard sent email notifications to the potentially affected people who had an email address in the compromised systems, noting that the scope and impact of the data breach are yet to be determined.
The university did not say how many individuals may have had their personal information compromised, but said that it would share additional information on the incident as its investigation progresses.
Mirroring a similar intrusion suffered by Princeton University a week before, the data breach was the result of a phone phishing attack.
Harvard University is also one of the many victims of the recent Oracle E-Business Suite hacking campaign.
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