Yesterday the University of Hertfordshire was targetted by a cyberattack which resulted in the universities entire IT network being taken down, as well as all access to cloud-based services being blocked. The attack started on Wednesday night at 22:00, when the universities Wi-Fi network was taken down alongside the email system and the universities student portal. Since the attack students have also reported that they have not been able to access Office 365 services, such as Teams, as well as other university paid for services such as Canvas and Zoom.
The university issued a statement on the website claiming, “shortly before 22:00 last night, the University experienced a cyber-attack which has impacted all of our systems, including those in the Cloud such as Canvas, MS Teams and Zoom. Please be reassured that our IT colleagues are working hard to rectify the situation as soon as possible.” The statement went on to say, “as a result, all online teaching will be cancelled today (Thursday 15 April), and we understand that this may impact students being able to submit assignments. We want to reassure our students that no-one will be disadvantaged as a consequence of this.”