Columbia University Hack Exposes Higher Ed Cyber Gaps

Experts Warn Funding Gaps Elevate Cyber Risk Chris Riotta (@chrisriotta) • July 3, 2025

A breach of Columbia University’s IT systems after repeated attacks by U.S. President Donald Trump is highlighting how universities are unprepared for today’s threat landscape.

See Also: Beyond Replication & Versioning: Securing S3 Data in the Face of Advanced Ransomware Attacks

A smiling image of President Trump reportedly flashed across Columbia's campus monitors June 24 as a hacker shut down key computer systems and claimed to steal 1.6 gigabytes of data on 2.5 million student applications. A hacker later told Bloomberg one aim of the breach was to probe whether the university has defied a 2023 Supreme Court ban on affirmative action. Columbia has stayed mostly silent about the incident and ...