Yesterday, Maine's Education Commissioner announced that the new student social security number collection program is on hold, pending an outside review of the security of the Department of Education's database program. The reason: a security hole in the information management system that "allowed authorized users of the system to see information there that should have been restricted."
It appears that this breach was discovered and patched before any harm occurred, and we should all be thankful for that. But, this is a strong reminder of the need for us all to take responsibility for protecting our own personal information, whether it is personal identifiers, or medical records, or our private associations. The government and private business are very willing to declaim the safety and security of their databases--we should continue to greet such claims with skepticism.