Columbia Cyberattack Likely Ended in Stolen Data, University Says
It's likely that an unauthorized party stole data during a June 24 tech outage that disrupted some of Columbia University's IT systems, the school said in an update Wednesday.
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After the outage was discovered, Columbia, in a press release Tuesday, said that it immediately began an investigation "with the assistance of leading cybersecurity experts and, after substantial analysis, determined that the outage was caused by an unauthorized party."
The school said it hasn't found there was unauthorized access to its networks after the June 24 incident. Moreover, it has "implemented ... safeguards across the University’s systems to enhance our security." Columbia didn't mention the number of people the breach impacted, what kind of information was compromised or specify the safeguards implemented in response.
"We know that this news may raise questions and concerns across our community about the scope of the affected personal information," and "our team is working toward answers," Columbia said. "This process will take time, and we ask for your patience. If we determine that personal information was compromised, we will, of course, communicate directly with those affected individuals."
"Moving forward, we will be examining what additional steps we can take and what other safeguards we can implement to prevent something like this from happening again," Columbia added, noting that it established an information hotline for people to call with questions.