College data safe from hackers

Olds College (OC) computer systems and data are safe from hackers, says Joe Guenther, OC's director of information technology.

Guenther was responding to news reports about a ransomware attack at Red Deer College (RDC) in late June and an earlier incident in which the University of Calgary paid $20,000 after computer hackers encrypted its data.

In late June, an RDC news release said the college was hit by a ransomware attack but didn't lose any data due to "the quick response of IT (Information Technology) services."

"Within15 minutes of the technology threat being received, RDC's IT Services department alerted all employees of the threat, and all RDC technology access was shut down to help mitigate the technology threat from spreading," a news release said.

"All affected files were moved by IT services immediately into quarantine, so this allowed for the technology threat not to spread to other college data and files.

"The IT services team also performed in-depth scans of all RDC servers and data files throughout the weekend, to ensure the technology threat had not spread."

A couple of weeks earlier, the University of Calgary paid $20,000 after ransomware encrypted its computer systems and data.

Guenther told the Albertan that although ransomware or other computer hacking is always a concern, the college is confident its computers and data would not be held ransom due to its backup files and "redundancies."

"It wouldn't kill us. We've got far too much protection in terms of backup and redundant systems," he says.

"The potential to do it -- the extortion, we're probably not that afraid of. The fact that it could happen is probably very likely, because we know that lots of colleges around Alberta face this.

"We have not had an attack like this. We have not had to restore because of encrypted data, so we have not faced an attack like this. But it's not sort of if, it's sort of when.

"That's why we've talked for years already about how to avoid – how to recover from that and that's really the strategy.

"We have very good backup systems. We harvest our data at very regular intervals, so it would be a matter of restoring the data from the backup," he adds.

"We harvest our data twice a day. We store it in multiple locations. We store it in Calgary as well, so we have really good backups. Our data – it's our most important asset, so we treat it accordingly."

Guenther says college officials are always analyzing the situation.

"We talk about enterprise risk. On an annual basis, we talk about 'what are the risks to our enterprise?' We then draw up our IT strategies according to those risks," he says.

"We practise disaster recoveries. We play scenarios, we simulate disasters. We say, 'what happens if this system goes out? How do we restore it?'"

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