An attempted cyberattack that forced UT San Antonio to take some systems offline has delayed the start of the fall semester, as state officials confirmed the incident involved a data breach.
RELATED | UTSA delays start of fall classes after attempted cybersecurity hack
The Texas Cyber Command confirmed UTSA was the victim of a breach and said the university notified the state agency early. The agency said it is working with the university on forensic evidence to better understand the threat.
Classes were supposed to start today, but UTSA pushed back the start of the semester until Monday. The university said more of its systems are being restored each day and it hopes its systems are back up and running on Monday.
In Austin, TJ White, chief of the newly formed Texas Cyber Command, confirmed the school was the victim of a data breach and said the school has responded well.
On campus, students said the disruption has added stress and uncertainty, particularly for first-year students trying to access class information and handle payments.
“It’s just like logging in to see our classes and all that,” one student said.
Another student said, “I was kind of expecting it though because their systems were down for a couple days, I was like how are we going to start the first day of school with all these systems down, I was kind of expecting it but shocked at the same time.”
A student also described concerns about financial matters during the outage, saying, “I was also having financial concerns too, I had to do a payment. We’ve been on edge.”
UTSA said the breach was detected before it reached core systems and that the delay is meant to allow time to restore services. Students said the extra time has also given some new arrivals more time to get familiar with campus ahead of the rescheduled start on Monday.