King’s staff offered counselling and prayers for lost work in IT crash

King’s staff are being offered counselling and chaplaincy prayers to help with data loss that occurred between 17th- 28th October.

Emails were sent out reassuring students and staff that a team were working overnight to fix the issue.

Almost every system was down from library services, payroll and shared drive access.

According to an email received by the staff, the university suffered “irretrievable data loss” but were told “not save work independently on personal devices, or any other purchased storage services”, which could mean the loss of valuable research material.

The email also explains the services on offer, “in addition, the Chaplaincy offers a confidential listening service to all staff and students.

“The Chaplaincy has arranged two special drop-in sessions where people can either speak to a Chaplain 1:1, or share experiences with other people affected.”

A spokesperson for King’s gave the following statement: “Virtually all our systems have been restored following the recent IT outage.

“As the shared drives have been made available to users, we have been working with them to identify any issues and this process is ongoing.

“The shared drives have been installed on new infrastructure and their back-up is on new technology. We are encouraging users to save data according to normal King’s practice.”