MUN's faculty association points to budget cuts as Memorial deals with cyberattack

The president of Memorial University's faculty association thinks institutional funding cuts might have had something to do with the cyberattack that targeted the university late last month. 

The incident affected IT services at Grenfell Campus in Corner Brook, which led to a delay in the commencement of winter semester classes. 

Memorial hasn't released much information to the public or faculty about the exact nature of the cybersecurity incident, said Josh Lepawsky, president of Memorial University Faculty Association (MUNFA), adding the union's request for an emergency meeting was refused. 

Lepawsky said a slimmed-down IT department at the university played a role. 

"The university has been experiencing structural cuts to its budget since 2015, amounting to about 30 per cent of the total budget," he said.

"It is, in some cases, impossible for members of various departments to adhere to the university's own IT policies for having sufficiently up-to-date equipment, because there's no budget to pay for new IT equipment."

Lepawsky said as budgets are cut and working conditions decline, the university is losing resources in the competitive IT sector. 

"People who work in IT security are in high demand, and they go elsewhere where pay is higher, working conditions are better."

At the end of the day, Lepawsky said faculty members have a lot of questions as they try to get a sense of the full scope of the breach.

"What, if any, long term implications are there for the breach? Everything from student numbers, employee numbers, even banking information — [it's] impossible to know from the information we've received," Lepawsky said. 

"We've asked for some kind of clear timeline for the recovery from this breach, and the best we've been able to get at this point is what has been said publicly by the administration, which is maybe several weeks. That's not useful information for a professor who's engaged in teaching or research." 

Lepawsky said MUN president Neil Bose has declined to meet with MUNFA, and advised them to get in touch with faculty relations. 

Memorial University is not doing interviews on the cyberattack, and will not describe what happened. 

In a statement, Chad Pelley, the university's manager of communications and media relations, said "the university — like any institution investigating a cybersecurity incident — is unable to answer certain questions." 

He said Ian Sutherland, vice-president of Grenfell Campus, is holding daily in-person meetings with faculty, staff and students to share information and progress updates.

"Any faculty member indicating substantive impacts on the delivery of their course is receiving direct one on one supports," the statement said. 

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