Pennsylvania State University's College of Liberal Arts experienced two cyberattacks, school officials announced Friday.
The school was targeted after "after enhanced security measures were adopted in the wake of a May attack on Penn State's engineering college network," Inside Higher Ed reported.
After a thorough investigation of the new incidents, the school found that in one case, the attackers exploited a vulnerability and gained unauthorized access to the college network. As soon as the attacks were detected, experts from Mandiant and Penn State moved to rapidly protect susceptible systems and took steps to prevent the attackers from returning to the network. Analysis of the College of the Liberal Arts' systems will continue as part of Penn State's enhanced security efforts.
"Penn State takes very seriously the security of the sensitive data in its care and we are continuing to investigate the circumstances that ultimately allowed attackers to access the network in the College of the Liberal Arts. Over the last several months at Penn State, we have implemented advanced monitoring techniques designed to better detect these intrusions, and that is what happened in this case," Nicholas P. Jones, Penn State's provost and executive vice president, said in a statement. "As we continue to see in the news, large organizations, including governments, corporations and universities, must do more to protect sensitive data from increasingly aggressive criminals. This is particularly challenging at a large public research university, where collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas and information is at the very core of our academic mission. However, this is a challenge we must face directly and with determination."
The investigation uncovered "no evidence that personally identifiable information or research data were compromised," Inside Higher Ed reported.
