Saskatchewan Polytechnic nearly back to normal after cyber attack

Three months after a malware attack invaded its systems, Saskatchewan Polytechnic still has some cleaning up to do before it can be back to normal.

At the end of October, an attachment containing malware was opened from an email at Saskatchewan Polytechnic. The school was notified and quickly shut down all of its systems.

Since then, the school has slowly been bringing things back on line, with services to continue classes a priority.
“Our top priority has always been our students and their learning experience,” said Cheryl Schmitz, chief financial officer and vice-president of administrative services at Saskatchewan Polytechnic.

Schmitz said the school is committed to offering an education in a safe and secure manner.

“Following this incident, Saskatchewan Polytechnic has increased online security for students and employees. This includes multi-factor authentication for online services, additional information about how to spot malicious emails, and new anti-virus software for employee computers,” said Schmitz.

Nearly all of the services are back on line at this point and there are only a few things are still to go, like registration for continuing education programs, safe access to online equipment, and restoring full functionality to things like the school’s website and the bookstore.

Schmitz declined to give any more details on what the internal investigation found including how the email got through. She did say the police investigation continues and that there’s no evidence any personal information was taken.