NWO restarts grant procedures
The organisation has rebuilt its system, using the back-up dating back to February 5, three days before the DoppelPaymer cyber criminals hacked the NWO. Coordinating bodies SIA and NRO will also be able to get back to work.
Priorities
Because the grant process was halted for five weeks, the NWO will have to prioritise some things. They’ve turned to, among others, grant advisers at research universities and universities of applied sciences to ask what they feel should take precedence.
They’ll initially stick to the original schedule, finishing up any processes that were already underway. Grant processes in the Talent programme will be prioritised.
NWO says that this means that all grant processes that have a deadline before May 27, 2021, will move backwards five weeks. The organisation expects to get back on its original schedule on May 27.
Emails
A few weeks ago, the UG warned people to be extra cautious when opening emails from NWO, SIA, or NRO, and to be wary of attachments in emails. The NWO site explains their emails are safe.
‘The risk that the hack infected email attachments is practically nil. Anything that says otherwise is presumptuous and not based on correct information’, the organisation writes.
The organisation also says that calls to delete NWO files that were received after a certain date have no basis in fact. ‘If there really were a credible risk, we would have taken action before that and informed everyone involved.’