Columbia University reports IT outage, notifies authorities

Columbia University said its IT systems experienced an outage that started on Tuesday morning, adding it was probing the incident and had notified law enforcement.

There was no indication of any data being compromised, said a spokesperson for the New York-based university.

"This morning, Columbia University IT systems experienced an outage affecting systems on our Morningside campus. Our IT team has been working to restore services as quickly as possible, and we have notified law enforcement," the university spokesperson said.


"At this time, no clinical operations at CUIMC have been impacted," the spokesperson said, referring to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center which is a major constituent of the Morningside campus near Central Park.

Columbia University's student newspaper, The Columbia Spectator, reported that the hours-long outage has impacted the university's online platforms.

It affected Columbia's UNI authentication service, which students use to log into their university accounts, the newspaper reported.

"We are experiencing widespread system outages," the university's website noted late on Tuesday.