The University of Manchester has posted an update to students and staff following the cyber attack that took place on the university’s systems last week.
Updating the dedicated ‘cyber incident’ page on its website at 3pm today, Wednesday June 14, the university again confirmed that a cyber incident had taken place, and said that its experts are still working “around-the-clock” to resolve the incident. It also advised that staff and students’ passwords would need to be reset from today.
The post in full read:
“During the week commencing 6 June, we found out that the University is the victim of a cyber incident. It has been confirmed that some of our systems have been accessed by an unauthorised party and data have likely been copied.
Our in-house experts and external support are working around-the-clock to resolve this incident, and to understand what data have been accessed.
Our priority is to resolve this issue and provide information to those affected as soon as we are able to, and we are focussing all available resources.
From Wednesday, 14 June staff and students will be required to reset their passwords. They will receive a prompt to reset their passwords when the system automatically locks or they need to re-log on to your system. No action is required until prompted.”
Separate advice shared on social media advised staff and students that the university had removed access to VPN services on all university IT accounts, although “colleagues and students physically on campus will continue to have access to all systems unless advised otherwise.”
It added that there may still be “further and significant disruption to systems,” and thanked staff and students for their support “during this critical time.”
