Data security incident impacts UT System, A&M, Tech, TSU

TYLER — Cybersecurity issues are becoming a day-to-day struggle for businesses, non-profits, and institutions. Recent trends and cybersecurity statistics reveal a huge increase in hacked and breached data from sources becoming increasingly common. U.T. Tyler is just one of the institutions under the University of Texas System umbrella, including UT Austin, San Antonio, Rio Grande, that may have been affected by a ransomware attack on Blackbaud in May. Additionally, Texas State University, Texas Tech University and Texas A&M University have also announced that they might have been subjected by the attack as well. Blackbaud, a third party, helps nonprofits and educational institutions raise funds.

“Publicly available information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, emails and birthdays may have been accessed.” UT officials said, “No credit card information, bank information, or social security numbers were accessed by the cybercriminal or compromised.” The software company believes the malware attack occurred in May. It is still unclear to the full extent of the attack. In ransomware attack, the information of a specific system is encrypted by an unauthorized party in a way that blocks access to the system until a ransom is paid. The U.T. System says they have reached out to donors and contacts after an internal review revealed their data could have been impacted by the ransomware attack. According to a post on the UT Website, “Based on the nature of the incident, the research Blackbaud performed, and its third-party investigators, Blackbaud has no reason to believe that any data went beyond the cybercriminal, or that the data has been misused or disseminated publicly. Blackbaud has also hired a third-party team of experts to continue monitoring for any such activity. For additional information regarding Blackbaud’s response, click the link. https://www.blackbaud.com/securityincident.