De La Salle University (DLSU) has sought the assistance of local authorities following a data security incident that was revealed this week. The incident restricted access to the university’s online systems, school paper The LaSallian reported Tuesday, citing announcements from the administration.

This issue, which was first disclosed to the public a day before, affected DLSU’s student portal My.LaSalle, as well as Animo.Sys, among others. It also affected the university’s library services. Unbox can confirm that the sites still cannot be accessed as of writing.

DLSU has sought the assistance of the National Privacy Commission (NPC) to address the data security incident. Any future announcements on the issue will be released as they become available, the university said. In the meantime, DLSU has instructed its employees to change their Google Workspace passwords.

They were also advised not to open their local computers until the university’s Information Technology Services Office, which was responsible for reporting the incident, provided newly-formatted computers for administrative offices.

DLSU announced that all Tuesday lecture classes and computer laboratory classes for its main campus in Taft Avenue, Manila, have been moved to Saturday, but it was unclear if this was in any way connected to the data security incident.

This issue comes after hackers exposed more than 600GB worth of stolen data from PhilHealth. The hackers had encrypted the data using a ransomware called Medusa, and later demanded $300,000 or around Php 18 million from PhilHealth. 

The NPC has since started a probe into the PhilHealth attack to look into possible violations of data privacy laws, according to a report by the Philippine Star.