The National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization offering enrollment services to thousands of North American colleges and universities, has been breached due to the MOVEit flaw, impacting nearly 900 educational institutions. The unauthorized party accessed certain files within the Clearinghouse’s MOVEit environment, potentially including information from the student record database on current or former students. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the affected files included enrollment and degree files submitted to the Clearinghouse for reporting requirements and verifications.
The organization emphasized that the threat actors could not access anything outside its MOVEit environment. In response to the breach, the Clearinghouse has rebuilt its MOVEit environment to bolster protection against similar cyberattacks in the future. Despite these reassurances, the breach has raised significant concerns within the cybersecurity community.
John Bambenek, a principal threat hunter at Netenrich, criticized cybersecurity leaders who have not secured their MOVEit environments, despite months of reported breaches and the availability of a known patch for the vulnerability. Bambenek highlighted the urgency for organizations still using a vulnerable version of MOVEit to update their systems, stating that there is no excuse for not having remediated the issue by now. He suggested that organizations in this situation should consider firing their Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for failing to address the vulnerability in a timely manner.
The incident underscores the critical importance of timely patching and system updates to protect organizational and student data from unauthorized access and cyber threats, reinforcing the need for educational institutions to prioritize cybersecurity measures and ensure the security and privacy of their data and information systems.
Source: Dark Reading
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