NEWS
UCL blasted by nearly 60 million email attacks at the start of 2022
Spam emails made up 6,720,913 of attacks blocked , while phishing accounted for 408,212 attacks and malware for 53,753 attacks .
UCL stated that it only keeps records for the number of blocked emails for 90 days .
University College London ( UCL ), a leading research institution , faced almost 60 million malicious email attacks in the first three months of 2022 , according to official figures .
The data , which was obtained through the Freedom of Information ( FOI ) Act and analysed by the Parliament Street Think Tank , revealed that a total of 58,628,604 spam , phishing , malware and Edge block attacks were successfully blocked by the university between December 24 2021 and March 23 2022 .
Edge block , which automatically blocks email messages sent to recipients that do not exist in the Office 365 tenant , accounted for 88 %, 51,445,726 , of malicious attacks blocked .
The news comes amidst rising cyberfears among higher education institutions , with the National Cyber Security Centre ( NCSC ) strongly advising organisations to ‘ follow the actionable steps in the NCSC guidance that reduce the risk of falling victim to an attack ’.
“ Education institutions are regularly targeted by cybercriminals who want to get hold of the valuable information and data they hold , such as world-leading research , intellectual property and the personal financial details of thousands of university staff , students and alumni ,” said Tim Sadler , CEO and Cofounder of Tessian .
Zayo increases fibre presence at Proximity ’ s UK Edge colocation data centres
Proximity Data Centres , one of the UK ’ s fastest-growing regional Edge colocation data centre providers , has announced the completion of Zayo ’ s high-capacity dark fibre network at its Edge colocation data centre in Chester Gates near Manchester .
Additionally , Zayo is nearing the completion of a new dark fibre network connection at Proximity ’ s Nottingham Edge data centre . Combined with the existing Zayo connection at the Birmingham facility acquired earlier this year , Proximity now offers customers , carriers and service providers three strategic Zayo direct Points of Presence ( PoP ).
Zayo ’ s dark fibre connection to Proximity Edge 4 at Chester Gates allows service providers to offer a range of low-latency services to businesses located in the north-west of England – including a growing number of applications developers and Content Delivery Providers ( CDNs ) – looking to move data and content closer to users . Services offered by Zayo will include dark fibre , Ethernet , wavelengths and IP . Additionally , the company is provisioning low latency circuits from Proximity Edge 4 to data centre hubs in Manchester , Dublin and the US , allowing its customers increased resilience when connecting to cloud services .
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