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SARATOGA SPRINGS Following a data breach, Skidmore College is being investigated by at least two law firms, with at least one ready to file lawsuits against the college if it doesnt take steps to effectively remedy the situation.

Individuals affected by the breach, which occurred in February, were notified by letter dated Sept. 15 from Chief Technology Officer Dwane Sterling, that was obtained by The Daily Gazette Family of Newspapers.

In the letter the college said it was breached on Feb. 17 and upon discovering the breach took steps to contain and remediate the situation, including changing passwords and implementing new threat detection and monitoring software.

The investigation found that an unauthorized actor gained access to the Skidmore network before deploying ransomware that encrypted a small percentage of its faculty and staff file sharing system, the letter states.

A third-party data mining team was used to find out which individuals and information was affected, according to the letter. Peoples name, address and social security number were all impacted, the letter said.

There is currently no evidence that any information has been misused for identity theft or fraud in connection with the incident, the letter states.

The college said Wednesday part of the analysis they did included scanning the dark web and the college found that no data was there.

Shortly after the incident, Skidmore replaced both our security services vendor and the software that manages security on our environment on a 24/7 basis, the college said Wednesday.

William Federman, the lead attorney with Federman & Sherwood which is investigating the breach, said hes spoken to over a dozen people himself who were victims of the breach.

We know just by interviewing people that there were some employees, some students and former students, but we dont know the mix of the two yet, but were looking for people to reach out and talk to us about any problems theyve had, he said.

He said its still unclear exactly how many people were impacted by the breach, noting hes seen anywhere from 12,100 to 121,000, although he said the 121,000 could just be a typo in and that the college has not been forthcoming with additional information he has been seeking.

If it does shape up that Skidmore was negligent, they need to do more to remedy the problem, give an explanation of whose information theyre holding and why, he said. For instance, are they holding former students information from 1972? If so, why? Are they holding applicants information that never worked at the university? If so, why?

He said the college also needs to pay for damages.

A lot of people are having to take up a lot of their time to now protect themselves from the negligence of Skidmore, he said.

He said if the college doesnt want to try and remedy the situation it could face lawsuits.

The college said data security is one of their top priorities. Following the breach the college offered two years worth of an identity monitoring service to those affected.

Skidmore has and continues to encourage our community to leverage the security software that the school offers, including dual-factor authentication, to avoid sharing their accounts with anyone, and to be aware of and report potential phishing attacks, the college said. The College continues to review our security on a regular basis and is committed to making improvements as available technology permits.

Federman said people should lock their credit reports, monitor all of their credit cards, bank cards, bank statements, security brokerage accounts and get in touch with the IRS.

We would encourage everybody to get supplemental ID theft insurance, he said.

He also said people need to be careful with anyone trying to solicit stuff from them.

People may contact them pretending to be somebody they know and gather additional information on them which could lead to some significant problem, he said. Theres no easy way to say it, theyre going to have to spend the time to protect themselves because Skimore failed to do that.

Console & Associates also indicated on its website it is investigating the college.

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Skidmore College may face potential lawsuits over data breach - The Daily Gazette