On Sunday 13^th September 2020 a cyber-terrorist hacked into Greensboro Community College systems. Only the college to discover it on Monday the following day. After discovering the ransomware attack, the investigation began by shutting down all campus classes for a few days.

According to the independent privacy and data protection watchdog, databreaches.net, their report suggests that “the cyber-attack trashed thousands of files containing crucial information about students and employees. In one single file, databreaches.net discovered that there were over 42978 student names, admission date, date of birth, social security number, phone numbers, GTCC email address missing.”

On that Wednesday, the Community College said they were investigating the cyberterrorism attack “to determine the cause, what happened and remediate the compromised systems.” The FBI and the cybersecurity experts promised to offer help to catch and stop the attack.

The college said they had contacted the student-faculty and staff members who were affected and will offer help with monitoring and perform identity restoration services for that year.

Student Eddie Byrd said that “they were telling us to change our passwords and stuff after the attack. I have been here for a considerable number of months; therefore, there is a good chance that I am a part of that breach. The school needs to take the necessary steps to prevent that from happening again.”

Another student Garrett Nuckols reports that “With this information, I would like to know if my personal information has been breached as soon as possible. For those people whose data has been breached, I feel sorry for you since it is unfair.”

The Information Technology security team said cyberattacks on academic institutions today are an everyday thing. The main drive for such cyber-terrorism attacks is money, and they urge people to act quickly to protect their financial information.