Officials restored the “MyLaw” platform on Jan. 6, almost a month after the platform suffered a cyberattack during finals last semester.
University spokesperson Crystal Nosal said officials have reported the attack to the FBI. GW Law administrators have worked with GW Information Technology, University leadership and AppointLink – an education software developer that owns the platform – to rebuild the platform’s servers, restore the encrypted data from a backup and conduct a forensic analysis of the attack, she said.
“A team of experts dedicated to restoring the best possible service to the GW Law community has worked tirelessly to serve and protect data, privacy, and the ongoing mission of our law school,” Nosal said in an email. “Moreover, Dean Matthew formed a Technology Tiger Team that is being led by Professor Scott Kieff to make an assessment and recommendations for how our intranet and learning management systems can be further updated and improved to provide the highest quality of service and protection in the future.”
The FBI declined to comment.
Nosal said officials have installed “state of the art” protections to avoid similar threats in the future and implemented ongoing testing and analysis of potential vulnerabilities that may arise in the future.
GW’s employee time reporting system, Kronos, also experienced a cyberattack last year in mid-December and remains unavailable for use according to the GWIT status update page.
Nosal said officials don’t know of any data that was lost, but personal information like users’ names, GWIDs, GW Law email addresses, course schedule information, faculty office room and phone numbers and some copies of student take-home exams may have been “impacted” during the attack. She said officials didn’t lose any data during the attack and students resubmitted copies of take-home exams that they may have submitted during the attack.
“In order to protect our community going forward, we have taken two steps,” Nosal said. “First, a crisis Technology Tiger Team is reviewing the forensic report and data to make recommendations by the end of January for how to best protect and update our technology going forward. Second, the law school’s technology committee will compare technology options used by our law school peers to determine how to provide the highest quality of service and protection in the future.”
The Student Bar Association rejected a bill to launch an audit on GW Law’s handling of the MyLaw outage at its meeting Wednesday.
