GREENSBORO, N.C. — Guilford Technical Community College closed all its campuses Monday, September 14, 2020, due to a cyber-incident, according to school officials.
The school system posted the news on its Facebook account and said the cyber-incident was discovered on Sunday.
All campuses were closed and in-person classes were canceled as a result, but online classes continued as scheduled on Monday.
The school system said the North Carolina Community College System Cyber Incident Response Team and other supporting agencies will help assess the GTCC system on Monday and determine what was impacted by the incident.
The school said the focus is to get critical services back online but it's not clear what services are currently offline, due to the incident.
"Part of our network was affected, so rather than bringing staff and have them maybe their computers wouldn't work, with no technology in the classroom, computers may work or it would not work, we decide to take a day to assess the situation," said Dr. Anthony Clarke, President, GTCC.
"Unfortunately for schools, they're not at the greatest position to weather these sorts of things and they are a huge target," said Erich Berger, an IT expert.
Berger is a consultant with ADT and is currently working on shoring up the cyber system's security at the Next Generation Academy.
Berger said academic institutions have increasingly become vulnerable because of increased distance learning and there is a need for precaution.
"Look to your user base first, make sure people understand what the organization can lose, and have them be a little bit more aware of how they're using the companies resources to access the Internet," Berger said.
The college has modified classes through Friday and posted an alert on their site. All of the campuses will reopen with the modified schedule.
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