A potential data security incident involving El Camino College online account information has resulted in Information Technology Services (ITS) requesting all students, faculty and staff to reset their account passwords by Thursday, Nov. 12.

An email sent from ITS on Friday, Nov. 6, let the ECC community know of the potential security incident and how the potential information taken can allow cybercriminals access to accounts.

ITS informed the community that no personally identifiable information was taken during this potential data incident but warned about a bigger event that can potentially happen.

According to the email, “ECC account password ‘hashes’ (a complicated string of characters) may have been retrieved and could be used to launch a large cyber-attack against ECC’s systems and network resources.”

ITS also stated this was a third-party error on behalf of the technology vendor and not the college’s fault. According to the email, this third-party vendor has already made changes to “protect system resources from any subsequent incidents.”

The passwords must meet the new 10-character minimum. Failure to change one’s password will make the account “inoperable”, according to ITS.

People can change their account password by going onto MyECC and clicking the Change My Password button under the sign-in button.