UNC Charlotte Breach Affected More Than 350,000

A breach at the University of North Carolina's Charlotte campus earlier this year may have affected some 350,000 individuals, according to news reports.

A news report by local station WBTV indicates that a breach reported in mid-February exposed financial account numbers and approximately 350,000 Social Security numbers of students and employees.

Due to a system misconfiguration and incorrect access settings, a large amount of electronic data hosted by the university was accessible from the Internet, the report says.

According to WBTV, the breach was actually two breaches: one affecting general university systems over a period of approximately three months, and another affecting the UNC Charlotte College of Engineering systems over a period exceeding a decade.

The exposed data involved people connected to the university, and included names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and/or financial account information provided in association with transactions with the university.

"We're still investigating as to how it came to be," said Stephen Ward, a spokesman with UNCC.

The university says it has fixed the problem and has "dramatically increased" its security since the incident.

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