UCL hit by nearly 60m email attacks since start of 2022
University College London was whacked with almost 60 million malicious email attacks in the first three months of this year, 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 Christmas Eve and 23 March.
Spam emails made up 6,720,913 of attacks blocked, whilst phishing accounted for 408,212 attacks and malware for 53,753 attacks.
Meanwhile, edge block, which automatically blocks email messages sent to recipients that do not exist in the Office 365 tenant, accounted for 88 per cent of malicious attacks blocked by the London university.
UCL stated that they only keep records for the number of blocked emails for 90 days.
The news comes amidst rising cyber fears amongst 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.”