St. Thomas Brushed Off Red Flags Before Dark-Web Data Dump Rocks Houston

Hundreds of thousands of University of St. Thomas files have appeared on the dark web after a summer cyberattack that shut down campus systems, with investigators finding at least 630,000 UST files posted online following the intrusion, according to the Houston Chronicle. The breach occurred roughly 12 days after the university completed an IT-provider transition on 31 July.

Emails and documents reviewed by the Chronicle show then-CIO Reginald Brumfield warned months earlier that “OculusIT operates very loosely” and flagged that endpoint protection such as CrowdStrike had not been installed on newly provisioned servers. Public records cited also indicate UST paid about $3.8 million to Ellucian between July 2023 and June 2024 for IT services and support surrounding the transition. The story, reported by Elliott Greene for DataBreaches[.]Net, highlights red flags that were brushed off before the data dump rocked Houston.