KALAMAZOO, MI — Western Michigan University IT services are returning to full operational capacity following a 13-day service disruption.
The disruption was caused by an “unauthorized user” that accessed two WMU servers on Jan. 19, according to an email from WMU’s Office of Information Technology. A full forensic investigation is ongoing, university officials said in the email.
The servers the user accessed contained user backups for faculty staff, according to the news release. It’s possible that some personal information was contained on those servers but no systems that centrally maintain university-wide student, employee or patient information was accessed, officials said in the email.
The university has viable backups and expect to be able to restore all data from those servers to the state they were at on Jan. 18.
About 200 end-user devices, the majority being computers assigned to faculty and staff, were accessed, according to the news release. Affected users have been notified and devices are in the process of being returned.
Protection measures have been added to entry points of WMU’s network and the firewall and network has been reconfigured to enhance security, the university said in the email.
WMU Secure Wi-Fi and EduRoam Wi-Fi are expected to return to service Wednesday, Feb. 1 and other affected services will return incrementally over the next eight business days.
“As our forensic investigation continues, we will verify the data that was accessed by the UU and share more when we have additional information that is confirmed by the forensic analysis,” officials said in the email.
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