Awarding body NCFE moves to reassure students after 'cyber-security incident'

Earlier this week, NCFE took its systems ‘offline’ as a precautionary measure after discovery ‘suspicious activity’ late last week.

In a message from NCFE’s chief executive online, it states, ‘ NCFE is actively responding to a cyber security incident after we discovered suspicious activity on our systems late last week

‘As a result of the actions we’ve taken to respond to the incident, our phone lines, live chat and Portal are unavailable, for the time being. We also proactively suspended our email system as a precaution, so NCFE colleagues are currently unable to access and respond to any emails you may have sent to us. We’ll let you know when these services are fully online again.’

It goes on to reassure T-Level students that assessments due to take place this week and will not be impacted.

However, paper-based Functional Skills assessments are unavailable for the ‘time-being’, but on-demand Functional Skills assessments can still be booked.

Also, face-to-face and remote assessments for end-point assessments this week have been cancelled and rescheduled.

The message goes on to say, ‘I am sorry for any inconvenience or concern this incident may cause. Please rest assured that our team is working around the clock to return operations to normal.

‘Regarding details of the incident itself, we have launched a comprehensive investigation into what happened. That remains in its early stages, and there are many questions to which we don’t yet have answers’.

It comes months after the Kiddo nursery group was hacked by cyber-criminals who were later arrested by police.