Stevens Tech struggling to rebound from cyberattack in time for start of school year
Nearly two weeks after its computer network was the victim of a cyberattack, Stevens Institute of Technology is still struggling to restore its network as the new school year fast approaches.
The campus’ wireless network is still down, exams for late summer courses have been postponed until Aug. 21-25 and it appears that students have not received class schedules yet, with the first day of fall classes scheduled for Aug. 26. Also, the deadline for tuition payments was extended to Aug. 26.
“Colleagues are working hard to make up for lost time with the goal of providing schedules and classroom assignments before the first day of classes on Aug. 26,” School President Nariman Farvardin said in an open letter to students on the school’s website.
Also, students with scheduling and registration issues were told they should go to the school Monday and Tuesday to resolve them.
Farvardin had a mostly optimistic message, saying that the school has "made swift and substantial progress in restoring our systems and returning to normal business operations.”
In his letter, Farvardin pointed to the progress made Saturday when “faculty, staff, and returning students were able to reset their passwords and re-authenticate their credentials to access cloud-based services including Office 365 email, Workday, Canvas, Slate and several others.”
Stevens officials have said the school’s system was attacked on Aug. 8 and in response the IT department shut down the rest of the system. Farvardin said that school officials believe no employee or student data was compromised in the cyberattack.
Over the following 11 days, officials have posted daily updates, citing “good progress” in almost every post on the Stevens website.
One student called the updates “nothing short of insulting and blatant disrespect" in an open letter to the school on Reddit.com.
“The ways in which Stevens administration has conducted itself in wake of the attack has been a gross display of incompetent resolution,” the student, Ryan Lange, said.
Stevens spokeswoman Thania Benios said a component of the sophisticated cyberattack involved ransomware, but “Stevens took immediate action to preserve and protect our systems after the attack was launched ... As a result, there was no need to respond to any ransom demand.”
Gloss