Faculty at Centralia College, near Seattle, said they first detected the ransomware attack after noticing their files "looked weird."

The school has lost several days of classes due to a cyber incident that's still under investigation.

The institution's CIO asked all on-campus faculty and staff to stop using Windows-based computers.

Central Piedmont Community College, an institution with 50,000 students in Charlotte, North Carolina, has canceled classes after a cyberattack disabled key systems used for remote learning.

Students, staff and faculty were notified earlier this year that a malicious actor had accessed sensitive data, prompting an upgrade to multi-factor authentication.

The company revised its story last week, but it's still not saying which universities were affected by the cyberattack discovered last May.

Administrators said they were able to restore all encrypted data from backups, but they decided to pay the ransom to prevent student and teacher information from being leaked onto the internet.

Code embedded in an official university website selling Spartan-branded sweatshirts and mugs compromised financial information of about 2,600 customers.

Fraudulent emails claiming to have important information on the current health crisis is installing malware and stealing log-in credentials from universities.