Brown University was hit by a cyberattack that has forced the school to disable systems and cut off connections to the data centre.
Brown University was hit by a cyberattack that has forced the school to disable systems and cut off connections to the data centre.
Brown University is a private US research university and is the seventh-oldest institution of higher education in the United States.
The university's Computing & Information Services staff took "a number of aggressive steps to protect the University's digital resources, including shutting down connections to our central data centre and systems within it."
“Among the most commonly accessed resources that are temporarily unavailable are Banner, VPN, RemoteApps and some websites hosted on Brown.edu," said Brown University Chief Information Officer Bill Thirsk on Tuesday, March 30.
An investigation was immediately launched to determine which specific systems were impacted and restore the complicated systems to operation as quickly as possible.
"We are working with colleagues across the University and are committed to getting systems back online as quickly as possible."
As the attack focused on the university's Windows-based devices, the faculty and staff were asked to switch to computers running other operating systems, smartphones, or tablets. There were no details shared about the nature of the incident.
“While many of our cloud-based systems — including Canvas, Zoom and Workday — remain up and running.”
“Employees can contact their IT Support Consultant (ITSC) or Departmental Computing Coordinator (DCC) to determine if their Windows machine has ‘known clean status,” hinting at a malware attack, said Brown’s CIO.
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