Cyber Threat Delays Start of Classes at UT San Antonio

One day before the University of Texas at San Antonio was scheduled to begin its fall semester Wednesday, officials postponed the start by three days after “attempted unauthorized activity against university technology systems” prompted them to shut down many of the university’s digital systems, including some related to email and phone services. The university also pushed back registration and payment deadlines. 

“We are making this decision to ensure the university systems, technology and services our students, faculty and staff rely upon are operating optimally as we begin the semester. Starting classes on Monday (Aug. 24) gives our teams the necessary time to restore services carefully and position our university community for a strong start,” UT San Antonio President Taylor Eighmy wrote in a statement to the campus community Tuesday. “Out of an abundance of caution, we proactively took systems and services offline to evaluate our technology environment and reinforce safeguards before bringing services back online.”

Over the weekend, UT San Antonio detected a potential threat to its systems “at the edge of our network, before it reached core systems and University Technology Solutions,” officials said in an announcement. “Our response has been effective. At this time, our ongoing investigation has found no evidence that university data was accessed or exfiltrated as a result of this activity.”

A university spokesperson wrote in an email to Inside Higher Ed that UT San Antonio has identified the source of the attempted unauthorized activity, but didn’t provide further details; they said only that the “university’s investigation remains ongoing in coordination with expert partners” and has no “definitive timeline for completion.” Aside from starting three days late, the semester is expected to carry on as scheduled, with the university “making the necessary academic adjustments within the existing semester calendar,” they wrote.

While UT San Antonio’s technological disruption this week may be one of the first examples so far this semester, it marks the latest in a long series of recent cybersecurity issues at colleges and universities. Last year, cybercriminals breached systems at Princeton, New York and Columbia Universities, compromising the personal information of thousands of people. Earlier this year, hackers also breached the widely used learning management system Canvas, forcing many colleges and universities to delay their final exams. According to one report, ransomware attacks on higher education institutions increased more than 8 percent in the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025. 

Contingency Plan ‘Essential’

Although not every attack results in a shutdown of digital services, the three-day delay at UT San Antonio highlights how colleges and universities have “become so dependent on technology that a sufficiently serious disruption can leave an organization literally unable to perform its basic functions,” Anton Dahbura, executive director of the Information Security Institute at Johns Hopkins University, told Inside Higher Ed in an email.  

“Organizations need to think seriously about how they will continue to operate when critical technology is unavailable—not merely how they will prevent a cyberattack or restore systems afterward,” he said. “Developing meaningful contingency plans for increasingly technology-dependent organizations is going to be challenging, but incidents like this demonstrate why it is essential.”

However, many universities may be short on the resources to make that happen. 

According to Inside Higher Ed’s 2026 Survey of Campus Chief Technology/Information Officers, CTOs perceive the biggest risks to their institutions to be recruiting or retaining IT talent (62 percent), cybersecurity threats (59 percent) and unsustainable cost trajectories (56 percent). Nearly half of CTOs say the rate of technology-driven change at their institution is unsustainable without new resources. 

“Higher education faces a particularly difficult security challenge because universities are built to be open and connected. Students, faculty, researchers, outside partners and technology vendors all need access to different parts of the environment, creating a sprawling attack surface that can be difficult to secure,” Michael Centrella, head of public policy at SecurityScorecard, said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed. “At the same time, those systems support everything from research and financial aid to registration and basic campus operations, so even a precautionary shutdown can quickly affect the broader university community.”

But, he added, that makes it all the more important for universities to invest in safeguarding those systems.

“UT San Antonio’s recent cyber incident shows that an attack does not have to become a major breach to disrupt an institution,” he said. “Disrupting access to the systems that keep a campus running can be damaging on its own, especially when thousands of students and employees depend on them every day. Security teams are not only protecting sensitive information, but also the digital services students, faculty and staff depend on every day.”