After suffering a ransomware attack the University of Utah has reportedly paid the ransom to hackers in an attempt to stop the criminals from exposing the encrypted student data.
It is believed only 0.02% of data was taken from the servers and in a statement the university said: “After careful consideration, the university decided to work with its cyber insurance provider to pay a fee to the ransomware attacker.
The statement continues: “This was done as a proactive and preventive step to ensure information was not released on the internet.
“The university’s cyber insurance policy paid part of the ransom, and the university covered the remainder. No tuition, grant, donation, state or taxpayer funds were used to pay the ransom,” University of Utah officials added.