Aurora College plans to increase cyber security following Christmas attack : My North Now
Aurora College plans to increase cyber security following Christmas attack : My North Now
Publish Date: 2026-01-07 21:43:00
Source Domain: www.mynorthnow.com
Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
Staff at Aurora College are working with specialists and partners to resolve the impacts of a cybersecurity attack that caused “damage” to the school’s online platforms over the winter break. Cyber attack experts warn that organizations of all shapes and sizes potentially face increasingly sophisticated cyber threats “at scale” across the country.
Dr. Angela James, Aurora College president said that staff at the N.W.T. college are collaborating with cybersecurity specialists and partner organizations. James says the college’s priority at this time is preventing further damage and restoring systems to so that classes can resume next week.
“Our priority this week is preventing further damage and restoring systems to allow classes to resume January 12.”
Officials estimated that staff and students will be able to access to the main servers and network by the end of this week, but said the self-service portal for applications may take longer to recover. A monitoring system flagged the cyber attack that occurred despite the school’s online security measures, including GNWT and College firewalls and anti-virus software.
“Aurora College has a number of security measures, including GNWT and College firewalls and anti-virus software in place, but nothing is foolproof. The College is working with multiple partners to increase all cybersecurity measures.” said James.
In response to the incident, James said the college plans to increase all cybersecurity measures.
School officials said that the system could be up and running again in as early as a few days.“Currently, we believe that staff and student access to the main servers and network will be restored by the end of this week. However, some areas, such as the self-service portal for applications may take longer to bring back on line,” said James.
Tiago Henriques, a cyber security expert and head of Research at Coalition, says it’s challenging to prevent cyber attacks because of the way that cyber criminals can quickly adapt their strategies using tools like AI.
“The evolving threat landscape just means that threat actors are always changing their tactics to maximize the financial rewards from their attacks and avoid detection,” said Henriques.
Researchers warn that the widespread use of AI technologies by organizations has fueled the frequency and severity of cyber attacks, with AI accelerating the automation of hacking and Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS).
Henriques explained that one of the main challenges has to do with AI’s ability to make cyber attacks like phishing much harder to detect.
“With better AI, (phishing) emails are much more coherent and specific, leveraging as much information about a person online as possible to ensure the attack is believable,” Henriques cautioned.
As Artificial Intelligence technologies evolve, organizations of all shapes and sizes potentially face increasingly sophisticated cyber threats “at scale” across the country.
“It’s at scale and it’s a completely a numbers game. So 10,000 people can be hit at the same time,” said another cyber security expert.
The types of organizations being impacted by cyber threats is growing: from schools to ‘mom-and-pop shops’ to water treatment plants to hospitals.
While there isn’t a “fix-all solution,” Henriques recommends five key safeguards: multi-factor authentication (MFA) on all critical accounts, using a managed detection and response (MDR) service, maintaining credible offline backups of critical business data, establishing a formal procedure for electronic payments and patching all software and firmware regularly.
