Centralia College Hit With Ransomware Attack 

Centralia College has been hit with a ransomware attack on its servers, according to a press release Monday afternoon. 

Below is the full news release from the college. 

This story will be updated.

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Early this morning, Centralia College learned of a ransomware attack on its local servers. At this time, the servers are shut down and an investigation is underway.

This is what we know so far.

• The college website and campus wifi are down. College faculty and staff are currently unable to receive email from outside senders.
• In-person services at the main Centralia College campus and at CCEast in Morton are available, but may be limited.
• Employees and students can access college phones, online classes, email, and online accounts off-campus. These are cloud-based systems that are unaffected by the local servers.
• All online and in-person classes are continuing as scheduled. Faculty are communicating with their students via email and Canvas, the online learning platform, frequently to alert them to course information and expectations.
• We have no estimate for when the college servers will be restored.
• It is not yet known if confidential student or employee data has been compromised.

“While the attack is clearly challenging and disruptive, we’re in a better place to combat it due to changes we implemented over the last two years,” explained Bob Mohrbacher, CC president. “Much of our operations were moved online in 2020, so many college services and systems are able to continue in spite of this attack. We are doing everything we can to get through this as quickly and painlessly as possible, particularly for our current students.” 

Additional information will be shared as it becomes available through the course of the investigation. CC is working closely with the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges and leveraging all resources available to minimize the impact and duration of the outage.