Since most students rely on online learning and video-conferencing apps as a result of the pandemic, the University of Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom has experienced a cyber-attack that has caused its online learning to be disrupted.
The cyber-attack, according to a ZDNet study, has impacted all of the University’s IT systems, including Office 365, Teams, and Zoom, as well as local networks, Wi-Fi, email, data storage, and VPN.
On Wednesday, the university was breached by hackers, resulting in the cancellation of all online classes for Thursday and Friday.
The varsity said in an update on its website “Shortly before 22:00 on Wednesday 14 April, 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,”
The university acknowledged that the outage could affect students’ ability to submit online assignments, but assured them that no student would be disadvantaged as a result.
Students were permitted to attend the university as long as they did not require computer access.
The varsity noted “You will not be able to access computer facilities in the LRCs, Labs or the University Wi-Fi. Remote access to specialist software and PCs is currently unavailable,”