The recent cyberattack had many effects on the students and faculty.

Luckily the college was able to reopen the night of Tuesday the 7th. The IT at NECC sent an email to the students and facility saying, “ NECC ITS would like to thank you for all of your patience while we are working diligently to investigate this cyber incident. At this point NECC ITS is happy to announce that access to Blackboard has been restored and you may now resume utilizing it”.

This whole event was very frustrating for students and the facility as they were one second able to access Blackboard and their emails and the next second they were not.

NECC student Olivia Barberian said, “I honestly thought it was crazy…, it was definitely something I just didn’t see coming.”
Barberian explained that, “thankfully a lot of my classes are in-person and I didn’t need to access my Blackboard or anything like that but it has been an inconvenience, only because as of right now, I think I’m still locked out of things, I can get into my email but I can’t get into Blackboard still.”

Barberian shared that in her Theater Directing class, “a student printed out materials for us because a lot of us still can’t get into Blackboard.”

NECC student Jessica Newey, who also works at the college, said that this cyberattack is, “something that just is part of our world today.”

Newey said she thought “I’m just gonna be affected by this and that’s life.” Newey had attempted to log into her Blackboard and email three times after the cyberattack but she just could not get in so she “had to physically go and talk to IT.” Newey was finally able to log into Blackboard and her email but she still could not log into her My Navigate or My NECC accounts. Newey explained, “I need [those sites to be] working because I’ll be helping students with their self-service banner next week, [to help them register for classes].”

Newey said, “honestly I wasn’t that frustrated with it but I recognize that for some students, especially when they have rigid professors that will not make accommodations for due dates and things, it’s more stressful than it should otherwise be and [I] feel like the professors who understand, understand and are accommodating, but the ones who aren’t, they impact the mental health of their students.”

Dean of Liberal Arts, Amy Callahan said the cyberattack, “was certainly an unexpected challenge for everyone at the college and unfortunately it was very disruptive to our students’ studies and the faculty’s teaching plans. My experience is that the faculty and the staff have been as accommodating as they can be, everyone recognized that this event was no one’s fault, we were targeted for this cyber incident and I have to say I admire how the faculty quickly made adjustments and tried to communicate with their students when possible about changes to the deadline schedules and assignment modifications.

“During some of the days that the campus closed, I was here with the other academic deans and many staff across campus, so we could meet students who hadn’t heard [about the cyberattack] and sort of explain to them what’s happening because most heard that the campus was closed and about the attack but of course, naturally, there were some who hadn’t heard,” she said.

“We did try our best to communicate with students, the deans sent emails during the shutdown that we [the staff] understood how disruptive this was and tried to reassure students that we were asking faculty to corporate as much as they could. There was a period of time coming out of the shutdown, where some students were still having trouble getting back on the network so that flexibility needed to be extended not just during the shutdown but sort of as we were all coming back and it’s kind of almost in stages where sort of everything gets rebooted and people are trying to do their password so I think unfortunately we’re in a world today where this is not completely unfamiliar, these sorts of disruptions, so I think, we’ve done the best we can and the semester is proceeding and students are doing their work and faculty are doing their work and I’m pleased about that.”