Midlands Tech is investigating how a virus crashed most of the computers on campus

Officials at Midlands Technical College shut down most of the computers on campus for several hours Wednesday after a virus affected an internal server.

The computer shutdown — done to block the virus from spreading — prevented students from accessing email, using on-campus computers and accessing some online classes, said Stefanie Goebeler, a vice president for marketing at Midlands Tech.

Midlands Tech is investigating how it became infected with the virus, said Stefanie Goebeler, a vice president for marketing at Midlands Tech.

“At this point we do not believe any data has been lost,” Goebeler said.

Faculty are working with students whose classes were affected by the computer issues, Goebeler said.

As of Thursday afternoon, all systems have been returned back to normal, Goebeler said.

“It’s business as usual,” Goebeler said.

Colleges and universities are common targets for cyberattacks. At the University of South Carolina, hackers bombarded the school with more than 100 million hacking attempts, according to a previous article from The State.

This story was originally published July 18, 2019 at 2:43 PM.