Soft Underbelly

It’s been quite a week.

The semester ended Friday.  I naively thought I would have grades in before the weekend was over, giving me time to decompress before summer session begins.

If only.  My institution’s data management systems—website, email, LMS, everything—fell victim to a ransomware attack last Wednesday.  I wasn’t too concerned at first, and some of my colleagues didn’t seem to be either.  (Though one prof on the faculty Google Groups site speculated whether a “pissed off student” might have been behind it.)

Services have been partially restored but I’ve been getting desperate emails from students saying they can’t access the LMS, even though other students were successful.  It doesn’t matter right now; grade rosters are still unavailable.

This is a localized problem, of course.  A cyberattack on a community college is of little interest elsewhere.  But it’s part of a pattern.  The recent attack on the Colonial Petroleum pipeline disrupted the southeastern economy for days, and news of other ransomware attacks have become more frequent in the media.

Before 9/11 focused attention on the terrorism threat, there were a number of articles discussing threats to critical infrastructure apart from Y2K.  Infrastructure was arguably less software dependent twenty years ago, but a policy focus on resiliency and redundancy seems to have fallen from public notice.

Perhaps we should take heed before the severity of attacks result in real and lasting damage.

 

Update 5/27/2021 Business Journals - "Expert View: Colleges Could Be Prime Targets for Cyberattacks This Fall"

© 2021 The Unassuming Scholar