Major College Software Vendor Puts Students at Many Campuses at Risk of Identity Theft

At least 18 colleges are scrambling to inform tens of thousands of students they are at risk of having their identities stolen after SunGard, a leading software vendor, reported that a laptop owned by one of its consultants was stolen.

The complete extent of the problem is still unknown, though many of the campuses that have been identified are in Connecticut and New York. The laptop contained students' names and Social Security numbers. In some cases, the exposed data also included financial aid information, e-mail addresses, birth dates, and driver-identification numbers.

Now college officials are accusing SunGard of waiting too long—about one month—to inform them of the security breach. The Connecticut attorney general has opened an inquiry into the incident. And there are widespread concerns that SunGard may not be adequately protecting college data.

SunGard Higher Education, the division of the company that employed the consultant, said it found out on March 13 that the laptop was stolen. Colleges said they weren't told of the theft until the second week of April. A spokeswoman for the company, Laura Kvinge, said that was not an undue delay, noting that the company needed to analyze backup data to determine the affected colleges before alerting them.