Security News > 2021 > October > University of Sunderland announces outage following cyberattack
The University of Sunderland in the UK has announced extensive operational issues that have taken most of its IT systems down, attributing the problem to a cyber-attack.
University updateThe University continues to experience extensive IT issues which has all the hallmarks of a cyber-attack.
We have sent an email to the university to ask for more details about the type of the cyber-attack, but we have not heard back yet.
The University of Sunderland is a public research institute that has about 20,000 students, so the disruption from the cyber-attack affects a notable number of people.
Although the University of Sunderland hasn't mentioned a ransomware attack, the extensive outage that has been caused makes this scenario likely.
There has been a string of ransomware attacks on universities in the past year, with some notable examples from the region being the attacks against TU Dublin, and the Newcastle University.