Cyberattack forces closure of Butler County Community College on Monday and Tuesday
Share this post:
Butler County Community College will be closed Monday and Tuesday in response to a ransomware attack on its computer systems, the college announced Sunday night.
The main campus in Butler Township and additional locations in Cranberry, Lawrence, Jefferson and Mercer Counties and remote and online classes will be closed as the college works to restore databases, servers, hard drives and other devices.
In messages posted to their Twitter account Saturday, the college tweeted several updates about ongoing IT issues.
????BC3 ALERT ????
*** IT Update***
BC3 is continuing to experience technical difficulties system-wide. An update will follow before Monday. pic.twitter.com/AEj7YyGHH3— BC3 (@bc3edu) November 27, 2021
Non-credit classes and services will not be available Monday and Tuesday.
A regional cybersecurity firm is working with BCCC to restore information lost in the breach.
The college enrolls more than 1,900 full-time and 1,600 part-time students.
In October, BCCC scheduled its last week of fall semester classes — Nov. 29 to Dec. 4 — to be online only, as a part of covid mitigation efforts.
A ransomware attack works like a hostage or extortion scheme. The cyberattackers cause an organization’s computer system to freeze or otherwise fail to function, and demand payment in exchange for returning the system to operation. High-profile cases in 2021 have included the Colonial Pipeline in April and JBS Foods, a meat processor, in May. Educational institutions are among frequent targets.
An August report from the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency noted that holiday weekends are popular times for attacks. The report detailed the rising number of ransomware attacks: From January through July 31, the FBI “received 2,084 ransomware complaints with over $16.8 million in losses, a 62 percent increase in reporting and 20 percent increase in reported losses compared to the same time frame in 2020.”
Officially, the U.S. government discourages attacked institutions from paying ransom demands. But there is no law against paying the ransom, and many organizations make payments in order to restore service in a timely fashion.