The North Dakota University System (NDUS) is notifying more than 290,000 former and current students and roughly 780 faculty and staff that their personal information – including Social Security numbers – may be at risk after an unauthorized party gained access to one of its servers. The affected server – was accessed using compromised credentials.Aside from securing the server and the data, the NDUS has enhanced other security measures to ensure a similar incident does not occur, including initiating stronger intrusion detection, revalidating each individual user, and developing a taskforce to address accessing data securely, according to the website. All impacted individuals are being offered a free year of identity protection services, as well.
OK that shows just how vulnerable systems with only userid and password protection really are, and how much it will cost if they are compromised. What are your thoughts as to the strength of just a password?