The University of Notre Dame says it does not know when its services will be fully restored following a cyber attack which has disrupted services for nearly a month. Source: ABC News.
About three weeks out from the start of its first semester, which began on Monday, the Perth university was hit by the ransomware attack which knocked out some of its IT systems, including direct communication channels with students and staff.
The university has provided little detail on the attack despite students reportedly being unable to enrol online or access coursework and timetables.
Associate Deputy Vice Chancellor of Academics Renee Kohler-Ryan said the university was still relying on manual processes.
“Within a university system, everything is very integrated, and we rely on the ways that when we feed applications into a system, that automates the way we can get enrolments in and we can get timetables in and get people into classrooms,” Professor Kohler-Ryan said.
“It’s not that we can’t do that right now, but what we have to rely on are manual processes of taking in information and putting it where it needs to be and doing it securely.
“So everything has been held up slightly, but it is always happening and our operations have not been impeded except for the fact that things have been slowed down.”
Professor Kohler-Ryan said while the disruption had caused multiple problems, the university has been able to adapt.
“Effectively what it’s meant at our end is that we’re not using some of our systems until they’ve been diagnosed fully and securely released,” she said.
“So we’re all working with what we have right now [and] at our end, everything’s been terrifically adaptable and we’ve been able to support our students in many different ways.”
Last week, Notre Dame released a statement, stating it was working to verify claims a third party had accessed some of its data.
“We take the protection of our data seriously and should we detect that any personal information has been impacted, we will notify relevant individuals and other parties, as required, as soon as possible,” the statement said.
FULL STORY
Cyber attack at University of Notre Dame still disrupting services as semester one begins, resolution time unclear (By Tabarak Al Jrood, ABC News)
