The Australian Cyber Security Centre reports an unnamed university “was compromised” in February by a ransomware attack

The university shut down its network, contained the attack and advised the ACSC there was no evidence of a data breach.

Which is good. What isn’t is that the ACSC warns cyber baddies use education networks as a path into other universities, research centres and government. “Once on a network, cyber actors can easily exploit trusted relationships by using compromised accounts.”

ACSC does not name the university attacked in February but that month RMIT shut down student-used systems, telling them it was “working to resolve some issues that have impacted access.” A university statement later added that security was not breached (CMM February 22).

Uni SA also went shields-up, in May when “technical issues” became a security incident with computers disabled as “a security precaution” and email down for over a week, (CMM May 19, May 26).