MCLEAN, Va., Aug. 2 (UPI) -- U.S. colleges are textbook cases of cybersecurity breaches, with more than 100 computer-related breaches at 76 schools since January 2005, a newspaper says.
"We're leaking data like a sieve," Indiana University law Professor Fred Cate, who directs a cybersecurity research center, tells USA Today.
Colleges have been the source of as much as half of all publicly disclosed breaches, the newspaper says, noting that's a larger share than financial services, government, retail or healthcare.
But this may not reflect the true figures because colleges may be more open to reporting network breaches than commercial businesses, says Linda Foley, co-founder of the Identity Theft Resource Center.
Of the 109 computer-related breaches the newspaper found at colleges since January 2005, about a dozen were reported this summer.
The breaches come at a time when higher education is under growing pressure to collect student data, privacy advocates say. A federal commission recently recommended the U.S. Department of Education track data on individual college students.
