p2pnet news view | Security:- Students at Ryerson University in Toronto have been told a security hole in the Student Administration System (SAS) left their personal information open for almost two months.

The university says it’ll notified the 588 students affected, according to Digital Home.

“The institution says the students exposed personal information included their name, gender, date of birth, student number, mailing address, email address and, in many cases, Social Insurance Number,” it says.

On December 27 a student told the authorities the SAS program let him see the name, gender, date of birth, student number, address and social insurance number of other students, says the Toronto Star, adding:

“The student’s report helped identify ‘the scope of the problem,’ said Heather Driscoll, Ryerson’s information and privacy co-ordinator, adding that the information of up to 588 students was exposed. ‘But we didn’t have enough information to find” the error’.

“Two more students notified the school of the glitch and, on Jan. 9, Ryerson pinpointed its source and devised a software ‘patch’ it says fixed the error. The new software had been in place since Nov. 17.”

The PeopleSoft (now Oracle) Student Administration System (SAS) was implemented three years ago, says Ryerson.

“The decision was made to purchase this system so that Ryerson’s student system would be better able to meet the changing needs of the University and its students.

“SAS is the most important business system for the University. It automates most of the key business processes in the student life-cycle at Ryerson, such as admissions, student records, financial aid, academic advisement and student fees. The system also manages the records of all undergraduate, graduate and continuing education students at Ryerson from the point they apply to the University through to their graduation.”

Digital Home – Ryerson software error exposes students personal, February 23, 2009
Toronto Star - Glitch bares Ryerson students’ information, February 24, 2009

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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