Chennai: Following four cyberattacks on its official portal in less than six months, the University of Madras is planning to strengthen its portal by installing an upgraded firewall and new servers.The university’s official website came under attack on Friday and remained inaccessible for several hours. It was restored within 24 hours, officials said.Professors said the repeated attacks may have aimed to access data on students and faculty members. However, the university said there was no evidence of a data breach. Officials suspect that vulnerabilities in the website’s firewall and other security systems may have facilitated the attack.“We want to examine the reasons for the frequent cyberattacks on our website. Our data is stored on separate servers, and the attackers could not access it. However, we do not want to take these cyberattacks lightly,” registrar Rita John said.The university plans to conduct a comprehensive review of its cybersecurity infrastructure and protocols.Cybersecurity experts have recommended an upgraded firewall, improved cyber-hygiene practices, high-end servers, stronger network infrastructure and secure e-governance software to prevent similar attacks in the future.
