Cyber Threat Disrupts University of St. Thomas Just Before Fall Semester
HOUSTON, TX- August 18, 2025 Just days before the fall semester’s kickoff, the University of St. Thomas in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood faced a serious cybersecurity incident, prompting administrators to temporarily shut down several online systems. Reported by the Houston Chronicle on August 15, the disruption was triggered by an unauthorized hacking attempt that forced university IT to quarantine affected servers as a precaution - even though there’s currently no evidence of sensitive data being breached.
The resulting outage has persisted for four days, leaving students without access to critical resources such as course schedules and financial aid information. Graduate student Alma Vazquez voiced widespread concern among her peers: “Am I enrolled in these courses? With the system being down, what happens with financial aid?”
Interim President Dempsey Rosales Acosta addressed the community in a campus-wide email, assuring that IT teams are diligently working to resolve the issue and restore functionality as swiftly as possible while maintaining data security.
This episode underscores a broader trend: as cyber threats rise among higher education institutions, the UST incident mirrors comparable breaches - such as this May’s hack at Columbia University, which affected 870,000 individuals.
Amid an already challenging environment marked by accreditation reviews, leadership changes, and budget concerns, the university now faces another test - demonstrating agility in crisis response and resilience in safeguarding student access in the digital age.