Cyber hack forces Laurentian to consider semester changes

Laurentian University is considering condensing its exam period to give students more time to complete coursework this semester, given the ongoing IT outages at the university since a “cyber incident” that began at LU Feb. 18.

Senior leaders with the university made this revelation at a March 1 Zoom town hall meeting for students. A similar virtual town hall meeting was also held for Laurentian employees on the same afternoon.

With many students voicing concerns that the term might be extended, thus incurring extra costs for them, or other unintended consequences, interim provost Brenda Brouwer said the university does not wish to extend the term.

Instead, the exam period may be condensed so students have more time to complete their courses. 

A special meeting of Laurentian University’s senate has been called for Tuesday, March 5, during which such decisions will be made.

“There will be motions considered about where accommodations can be introduced with respect to things such as class and date submission, deadlines, and the like,” Brouwer said.

While Laurentian now says a decision about changes to the semester will be made March 5, the FAQ section on the website said a decision would be made by the end of day March 1, something several students pointed out in the Zoom meeting chat.

Another common topic in the Zoom chat was whether the term would be cancelled outright due to the cyber incident. 

“I think we should be very, very clear, the term is not being cancelled,” said Tammy Eger, Laurentian’s vice-president of research.

“The term is continuing, with the only thing that's being considered is whether the period of time in which you would finish your course portion, as Brenda said, may be extended, and senate will confirm on Tuesday.”

A participant in the meeting posted in the chat that the school’s handling of the cyber incident “was really terrible,” and students “should not have to pay,” adding that extending the semester would impact upon students who already have summer jobs.

“I feel we can accelerate our classes for the rest of the semester,” the participant said.

In terms of where Laurentian is at with restoring IT services, as of the afternoon of March 1, access to cloud-based services such as Gmail, Zoom and and D2L (the program used by LU for teaching and course materials) had been restored.

Before logging in, users are required to reset their passwords.

The cyber incident has also meant wifi is still down on campus, and the university’s website is mostly down, displaying only information related to the ongoing IT outages and their impacts on the university community. 

One of the students on the Zoom call complained about having burned through all of the data on their phone during the outage.

The university’s website said “the next milestone is campus internet connectivity, which has been the focus of a dedicated team since the beginning of the cyber incident,” adding that there’s “currently no estimate on when this would become available.”

Ben Demianiuk, Laurentian’s director of business and development, said during the Zoom meeting temporary wifi access has been installed in certain parts of its residence. 

“We do also plan on launching some additional hotspot areas across campus,” he said. The university’s website indicates this has since happened.

Laurentian is also in the process of installing a security program called SentinelOne on its employees’ devices, but students were told they did not have to worry about this unless they are actually also employees themselves.

In terms of the cyber incident, LU general counsel Céleste Boyer said the university continues to work with a team of outside experts “to contain the incident to an end to make sure that our networks are safe. 

“We also have external experts assisting us on determining how this happened, and who may be impacted by this incident,” she said.

“Investigations of this sort are quite lengthy. So we understand your frustration, but we certainly appreciate your patience to allow our experts the time to properly assess this incident.”