ST. CLOUD -- Cyber attackers managed to access servers at St. Cloud State University this summer.

Students received a letter on September 28th that there was unauthorized access to servers at the university on August 15th.

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Information technology staff detected the breach and moved quickly to limit the attackers access.

Phil Thorson is the Deputy Chief Information Officer at St. Cloud State. He says catching the breach quickly allowed them to limit the hackers' access.

I'm extremely proud of our information technology team, as they took and identified that outside intrusion very, very quickly, and responded with a timely and methodical approach. That is what's super important, that you don't end up in a panic where you end up in a level of chaos.

StarID is a system used by colleges in the state to manage passwords, so students don't have to memorize as many. The hackers got access to student and staff StarID accounts, and email address books.

Thorson says they are prepared to handle breaches like this, and followed their incident response management plan.

 

All students and staff were required to change their StarID passwords.

Thorson says no financial records, medical information, or grades were accessed.

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