Last week, Columbia was struck by a university-wide cyberattack, rendering most online IT services unavailable and leaking at least 1.8 million Social Security numbers belonging to students, faculty, and staff. Columbia has understandably faced intense criticism for failing› to protect affiliates’ personal information, but CUIT has confidently assured our reporters that this kind of leak will never happen again, announcing the creation of a brand-new cybersecurity.
Previously, the personal information of every Columbia affiliate was accessible via a single password kept on a shared Google Doc with the link set to “Anyone on the internet with the link can access.” Now, the new initiative has big changes in store: tacking on an exclamation point to the end of this password, changing it from “password123” to “password123!” A newly hired cybersecurity consultant will then resend the Google Doc to the entire IT department, and they will be sure to also send an email out to everyone with the new password in the subject line, in case they can’t figure out how to access the document.
“We are confident that this new initiative will allow us to put up an ironclad defense against online attackers,” a CUIT representative proudly told our reporters. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s an email from an unknown sender about an unpaid toll in Arizona that I have to reply to with all my bank information and a copy of my birth certificate.”
