Some Laurentian University services restored following 'cyber incident'

A 'cyber incident' that started on Feb. 18 continues to affect IT systems, students and staff at Laurentian University (LU) – though recent updates by the school indicate some progress has been made.

The current status of IT services can be viewed online here.

Authentication system

As of Friday, LU restored its authentication services allowing access to the cloud-based services (Gmail, Zoom, D2L).

Beginning on Saturday, students were able to log in to cloud-based services – however, before logging in for the first time users are required to reset their passwords.

“As of March 2 at 9 a.m., the password reset process will be available. During this process, you will need to validate your identity by answering one of the questions you established during your password recovery setup,” said LU in its update on March 1.

“If you are unable to validate your identity, please contact IT.”

LU said Saturday that some people may experience delays with authentication.

“We encourage you to be patient. The system is working and being monitored. If you are not successful with the first attempt, try again later in the day.”

Impacts to Online Learners

“With the issues we have faced as a community over the past two weeks; specifically, the inability to access the online teaching and learning environment, considerations of the academic impacts have been discussed,” said LU in its update Friday.

The school’s senate has scheduled a special meeting for March 5 to “discuss and decide on the accommodations to be made for online learners with respect to extending the end-date of classes while maintaining the existing term end date as well as decisions on internal academic deadlines.”

Campus Network

School officials said the campus network has been "significantly impacted."

“The next milestone is campus internet connectivity, which has been the focus of a dedicated team since the beginning of the cyber incident and will continue to be a top priority,” the school said Friday.

“We are not in a position to provide an estimate on when this would become available, but we will be able to give a better idea of this when we are within one day of reaching the goal.”

Due to the loss of access to the campus network the school has set up Wi-Fi hotspots to allow internet access external from the campus network.

As of Sunday, hotspots were available at the following locations:

• West Residence W132
• West Residence lobby
• East Residence, ground floor lounge
• Alphonse Raymond seating area
• Parker Building Atrium
• McEwen School of Architecture

LU expects to add more hotspots in the coming days with more equipment expected on Monday.

Remote work

The school is continuing to ask that those who are able to work remotely and are not required to be on campus continue to work from home for the week of March 4.

Staff use of personal emails

LU has asked all staff to discontinue the use of personal email accounts for work purposes.

“Staff who had chosen to use personal email addresses to continue communicating are now expected to discontinue all work use of personal accounts immediately upon regaining access to your Laurentian account,” said the school Saturday.

“Further, please delete any work emails that remain in your personal account after saving copies of what you need onto Laurentian systems.”

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Help available

Laurentian has set up an online FAQ on Google Documents to help students, faculty and other staff navigate the outages.