A community college near Sacramento was hit by a cyber attack over the weekend, two days before the start of its academic year, and has hired a third-party firm to investigate.
In an email Sunday to students and staff, Sierra College said its computer systems “were attacked by criminal hackers” Saturday.
“This attack has limited access to technology and data resources throughout the district,” campus officials wrote. “After we learned of the incident, we took immediate actions to protect our data and recover systems as quickly as possible. A professional third-party forensic firm has been engaged to investigate and determine the scope of the incident.”
The campus was also hit in May 2021 by a ransomware attack, which caused network outages.
The fall semester began Monday at Sierra College, which has a main campus in Rocklin with satellite sites in Roseville, Grass Valley and Truckee.
The college said “most systems and services” are back online, including course information through Canvas.
“Almost all of our systems, technologies are up and running,” Sierra College spokesman Josh Morgan said. “We’re working on testing out a few systems right now. We’re able to provide education for all of our students on the first day of classes.”
Morgan said it was “too early to know everything about this incident,” including whether it is a ransomware scheme similar to last year’s, which affected the college’s networks for about a week and a half.
“Our focus right now has been getting our system secured and running,” Morgan said Monday. “A more detailed look at what happened will follow that.”
Last year’s attack also prompted Sierra College to make security improvements, including moving systems to the cloud, Morgan said, which he said helped the college to make a quicker recovery from this weekend’s attack.
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