Hundreds, even thousands of people can get infected within hours. Hackers that create viruses know that students in universities don't protect themselves and don't care about security, so they exploit it. The best way to combat virus attacks is to buy and maintain good virus protection . Damage from any computer problem, whether it is viruses or not, can be minimized if the student has a way to back up their files. Backups of papers and projects will save countless hours if all is lost or corrupted.
Students are responsible for backing up all data on their computers.
If you don't backup your data and a virus or hardware problem occurs, you could loose valuable information and and need to reload everything. Viruses are becoming more and more problematic for residence hall and college students in general. At least you have 5 help desks around campus to get help if a virus does infect your computer. Those living off campus are also suseptable to virus attacks too. All you need is to be included on a contact list on someones computer that gets infected with a self mailing virus.