Shortly after the University of Calgary urged other institutions to purchase cyber insurance, North Carolina State faced a massive breach to their operating system. Names, addresses, student ID numbers and Social Security numbers were compromised in an elaborate phishing attack. The person responsible was able to gain access to a university email account which contained all of the compromised information.
After the breach was discovered, NC State hired an incident response team who were able to identify the compromised accounts. The school then required all of those affected to change their account credentials and improve their two-step verification system. In an attempt to protect those affected, the individuals whose information was put at risk will be receiving one year of free credit monitoring.