Search

ARCHIVES
CONTACT US
WORLD NEWS

UA officials evaluating Jobtrak agreement

Career center director still 'cleaning up damage' from Internet security breach

UA officials aren't yet sure whether they will cancel their affiliation with Jobtrak, a national job listing company that made hundreds of student transcripts and resumes available to the public on its FTP server.

Until Tuesday, student information from at least six schools was available on the company's File Transfer Protocol server.

"Nobody has made any decisions," said Marie Rozenblit, University of Arizona Career Services director. "We're going to work with Jobtrak to make sure this doesn't happen again."

Jobtrak, a non-profit organization, serves nearly 1,000 institutions nationwide, including the University of Arizona.

The Arizona Daily Wildcat Tuesday informed Jobtrak that student information from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Southern California, the University of California-Los Angeles and the University of California-Berkeley was available in a publicly-accessible portion of the company's FTP server.

No University of Arizona student information was found on the site.

Rozenblit said that although she has not yet made a decision, she is planning a meeting next month with other career center directors and "this will come up."

"We (directors) are still working behind the scenes to clean up damage done by publicity," she said.

Rozenblit said she has contacted the UA attorneys' office to discuss the situation, as well, and officials are working to monitor the company's actions.

"Believe me, we're on it," she said.

University attorneys could not be reached last night.

Ken Ramberg, Jobtrak's chief financial officer, said he "absolutely" does not expect any universities to cancel their agreements with the company.

"As soon as we were made aware... that a small file of resumes from 1998 were available to the public, we deleted it. End of story," Ramberg said.

Ramberg sent a statement, via e-mail, to career center directors nationwide today, informing them of the security breach.

"We take the security of our site very seriously," the statement said. "We've taken appropriate steps ensure this will never happen again."

UA President Peter Likins said he was not yet fully informed of Jobtrak's error, but said he was "relieved" no UA information was contained on the site.

"I'm certainly not relieved at Jobtrak's performance," Likins said.

But he added that it is Rozenblit's decision whether the UA should stay with Jobtrak.

"I certainly am not in any position to recommend a remedy at this point," Likins said.

Erin Mahoney can be reached at Erin.Mahoney@wildcat.arizona.edu.