At the end of the session, the 7,000 students at Cégep de Lanaudière will be deprived of classes for at least three days due to a cyberattack which forces the closure of the four establishments.
In an email sent on Sunday, the CEGEP management confirmed to students and employees that “certain servers […] were victims of a cyberattack on May 3″ and that as a result, classes will be suspended until at least Tuesday.
On Friday, the CEGEP management announced that a “computer incident” forced the closure of establishments in Joliette, Terrebonne and L’Assomption.
“Although the investigation is still ongoing, external cybersecurity experts are closely monitoring the dark web and, fortunately, confirm to us that at this time, no data leak is suspected,” adds management. , which commissioned the Montreal cybersecurity firm StreamScan to “investigate day and night” into the origin of the attack.
It was not possible to contact the management of Cégep de Lanaudière on Monday morning.
This is not the first college establishment to be the victim of such a computer attack. In May 2022, Collège Montmorency, in Laval, had to suspend its activities because its computer system had been compromised.
The latest budget tabled in Quebec also provides an amount of $7 million over five years to help CEGEPs improve their cybersecurity measures.
“These initiatives will allow CEGEPs to react quickly in the event of attacks or threats of unauthorized disclosure of data,” we read in the 2024-2025 budget.