SAN ANTONIO — There wasn’t much going on at the University of Texas at San Antonio’s main campus on Wednesday despite it being the first day of school.
A cybersecurity breach delayed the first day of classes and pushed them to Monday, Aug. 24. Students and teachers had to navigate not having access to their email and UTSA account.
“It’s been hard. I’m kind of someone who leaves stuff until the last minute, and so I was trying to get my permit and just look at my classes, look at my syllabus, and I just couldn’t,” Alexandria Melendez, a UTSA student, said. “Everything was completely shut off.”
UTSA journalism student Natalia Edwards talked about how difficult it was for her to get in contact with UTSA via phone.
“Phones aren’t working. I’m a military student, so I tried to reach out to make sure all my funds went through, make sure I have my money on the 31st, but can’t call them,” Edwards said Wednesday morning. “And then if I try to go on campus, I don’t know if they could even get into it because the systems are down.”
UTSA President Taylor Eighmy released a statement on the university’s website.
“The university responded to attempted unauthorized activity of technology systems,” Eighmy said. “Out of an abundance of caution, we proactively took systems and services offline to evaluate our technology environment and reinforce safeguards before bringing services back online.”
Even though UTSA’s website has a detailed timeline of the events, students have said it’s frustrating learning about new information via social media.
As of Thursday, staff received their UTSA accounts, and students have been receiving them in a staggered order. A professor told Spectrum News that the IT team at UTSA has done an exceptional job of getting everyone up and running again before school starts on Monday.
