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All the email accounts used by the employees of the University of Gothenburg, around 12,000, have been on the university’s own servers since 2015. The system is designed to handle the failure of various so-called disks or memory devices But during the night of September 19, what could perhaps be described as a system crash occurred.
Suddenly blocked about half of all email accounts completely. No one could access the content of the accounts and emails could not be sent from them.
– What caused it was the simultaneous washing of dishes on a large scale. The system couldn’t handle that, says Sören Ehrnberg, IT manager at the University of Gothenburg.
Before long, half of the employees were able to recover their email accounts. Just two weeks later, the university’s IT department managed to recreate thousands of accounts, but there are still as many as 3,000 locked. Sören Ehrnberg doesn’t know how many of these are actively used by university staff or people who are connected to the university, but he estimates that there are more than 2,000 people who still cannot access their email.
Some students at the university it should not be affected, but there are many researchers and other staff who still have difficulty performing their tasks.
In an email to DN, the director of GU, Eva Wiberg, emphasizes the seriousness of what happened.
Eva Wiberg, Rector of the University of Gothenburg.
Photo: Tomas Ohlsson
“The fact that email does not work for everyone is a very serious situation for our entire business and shows the vulnerability of our digital society,” he writes and continues:
“I can guarantee that we do our best and I continue to wait for the understanding of those involved, both internally and externally. This incident needs to be fully investigated and preparations are underway for an in-depth audit. “
– We will make a comprehensive selection of what exactly happened and how it could have happened, says Sören Ehrnberg.
How come all the email accounts are on the university’s own servers?
– Historically, we have had a solution that works well. We used to have an external partner, but when that agreement expired, we decided to choose the path. We did it after talking with Microsoft and other vendors.
Work is now under way to back up the content of the servers and restore the email accounts that are still locked out.
– We try to recover data and at the same time make the communication go in and out. It is a difficult balancing act. I am very concerned that we still have affected employees, says Sören Ehrnberg.
Read DN news from Gothenburg and western Sweden.
