UK: Colchester Institute suffers cyber security attack

The education sector has long been recognized as a relatively easy target for criminals. Now Colchester Institute in the U.K. has fallen prey to a cyberattack. The attack was first announced on April 29, but had occurred earlier in the week. In their first statement, posted on their web site, the school wrote As soon as we were aware of the incident, we engaged third-party IT specialists who are working with our internal ILT team to restore our systems and who are also investigating the incident as a priority. Teaching has continued on campus and we have been able to deliver remote learning as normal. Please be aware that our email systems are not currently operational and neither is our online application system. Yesterday late afternoon, the school updated the faculty and students that they did not expect to have ILT services by restored by this coming Tuesday. Note to all staff, students and other customers. At this point we are not expecting to have normal ILT services restored ready for Tuesday, 4th May. This means there ood be no oodle to WiFi, Q Drive, My Documents or any other systems on campus. Systems such as Zoom, oodle and Gsuite can be accessed from home or on mobile devices anywhere using personal data. The notices do not indicate how the attackers gained a foothold or what type of ransomware was deployed.DataBreaches.netRead More