Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) has dismissed viral reports purporting that the institution's student portals were allegedly hacked and all fee balances cleared.
In a statement on Tuesday, December 9, the institution's Deputy Vice Chancellor in charge of Academics, Robert Kinyua, clarified that the system outage was due to maintenance and not hacking as alleged.
He described the allegations as false and misleading, insisting that all university systems and portals remain secure, and all student records and data are safely kept.
"JKUAT has noted with much concern recent misinformation circulating on social media claiming that the JKUAT Student Portal has been hacked. This information is false," Kinyua stated.
He added, "All University systems and portals remain secure, and all student records and data are safe. The temporary outage experienced on the Student Portal, which has since been resolved, resulted from a scheduled system."
According to the deputy vice chancellor, the system upgrade was carried out to incorporate the student household fee component as per the new funding model.
"We reassure all our students and stakeholders that no data or records have been affected in any way," Kinyua affirmed.
The clarification comes after a section of students raised concerns, purporting that their portals were displaying missing academic records and empty fee balances.
Learners revealed that the purported system failure began on Saturday, December 6 and extended for three days without any immediate response from the institution.
For the three days, students prematurely concluded that their portals had reportedly been hacked and their fee balances cleared.
While others treated the sudden outage as a breach of the system, others speculated that the systems might have hit the wall due to the ongoing mass examination registration.
By Tuesday morning, students who refreshed their portals found it restored, with the accurate academic details and fee balances, putting to an end the speculations.
