University of Copenhagen data breach exposes data of 525,000 people

Why this matters: Half a million people did not choose to have their data sitting in a university test environment. That is the first problem. Test environments are often less protected than production systems, yet they routinely hold real personal data because it is convenient for developers. Universities collect a wide range of sensitive information — student records, health data, financial details, research involving human subjects. When that data ends up in a lower-security space and something goes wrong, the people whose information was exposed pay the price for a decision they never knew was made.