After applying to college, registering for different services and programs, and applying for financial aid, most UC Berkeley students likely consider divulging their personal information a routine (and tedious) part of college life. What they shouldn't have to get used to is the increasing risk of having their confidential information compromised because various campus entities lack secure computerized databases.

For the second time in six months, a campus division experienced a digital security breach. The web server of the Journalism School was the most recent victim, following a more severe incident at University Health Services discovered in late April, in which the social security numbers of 97,000 people were compromised. Officials handled the most recent incident far better, choosing the wiser course of waiting to inform students of the breach until more and clearer evidence had surfaced.

Though hacking in the realm of higher education is not an uncommon phenomenon, UC Berkeley was the only campus in the UC system with a major security breach in 2009 reported on the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse Web site.

To have two such similar incidents in the same year is unacceptable, especially considering that the majority of students' personal data entrusted to the campus is held in online databases like the two which were compromised.

IT security must be considered a top priority in the campus budgeting process, despite continuous cuts, as UC Berkeley ventures further into the digital age.

When commenting on this particular case, an information privacy professional acknowledged that, "universities don't have the resources for the best (information technology) people, necessarily."

Especially at UC Berkeley, this should not be the case. With a top-ranked engineering program and a rigorous computer science major, this campus certainly has the resources to protect the confidential information of students, faculty and staff-it's just up to the campus to use those resources properly.