Birmingham college falls victim to 'major ransomware attack'

The colleges says it is reverting to online teaching for one week starting Monday

South and City College in Birmingham disclosed on Saturday that it had fallen victim to a "major ransomware attack" affecting many of its core IT systems.

In a statement published on its website, the College said that it was shutting its eight sites to allow IT experts to resolve the issue.

"On Monday 15th we will revert to online teaching for the rest of the week for all areas," the college informed students.

"There may be some disruption during this time and we ask that you bear with us and contact your tutor if there are any problems."

South and City College was formed in 2012 following a merger of South Birmingham College and City College Birmingham. It has over 13,000 students, according to its 2019-20 financial statements.

The college did not say which strain of ransomware infected its computer systems, although it confirmed that the incident had been reported to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the National Crime Agency (NCA), Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Security Response Team, and Action Fraud.

According to some media reports, the attackers were able to encrypt "a number of servers and workstations" and extract "a volume of data" from servers.

"As if COVID wasn't enough, hackers have finally got through our system and taken down all our IT systems - a few weeks getting it all sorted and back up," principal Mike Hopkins tweeted.

This is the latest in a series on cyber attacks on educational institutions in the UK in the past one year.

Nearly 20 UK-based universities and charities were hit in a global ransomware attack in May last year that targeted US-based cloud computing provider Blackbaud.

Affected institutions included the University of York, University of London, University of Leeds, University of Reading, Oxford Brookes University, Loughborough University and University of Birmingham.

In September, Newcastle University also came under attack from cyber criminals who threatened to expose personal data of students and staff unless a ransom was paid.

Following those incidents, the NCSC, in co-ordination with JISC, issued an alert and guidance in September for colleges and universities.

It advised educational institutions to implement a 'defence in depth' strategy to defend their systems and networks against malware and ransomware attacks.

"Your organisation should also have an incident response plan, which includes a scenario for a ransomware attack, and this should be exercised," the advisory said.