An I-Team investigation reveals what steps and measures are being taken at College of the Desert to prevent a future malware attack.
Two other earlier incidents have paralyzed campus computers for more than a week over the past two and a half years. The first incident was in August 2020. The second was last year in early July.
Nick Lumsden is one of the founders of NYJL Advisers and a cybersecurity expert with more than 20 years of experience helping businesses recover and prevent future malware attacks. Lumsden said: “You never want to fall victim to the same type of attack again. That would be a failure.”
The latest attack in July brought down computer servers and data systems that university students and administrators rely on every day to do their jobs. The university’s Board of Trustees requested an audit of the school’s IT systems in December. A board resolution called them “vulnerable” and “inefficient.”
I-Team researcher Jeff Stahl has been digging into COD documents and speaking with experts to see how the university is trying to better protect its many Internet-connected systems.
The COD’s acting public information officer, Kristeen Farlow, said: “We can’t say, I don’t know if any entity, university, company, etc., individual could say that a malware attack will never happen.”
The university says its technical staff is working hard to mitigate and implement new systems and procedures to prevent another attack or make it less invasive as hackers find new ways to try to exploit this and other schools.
Is enough being done to prevent another damaging incident? There is much more that we will reveal.
Find out what the university is doing to prevent this from happening again Thursday at 6pm on News Channel 3.
