Eastern faculty, staff and student emails have been targeted in an attempt to gain access to internal resources and data.

According to an email sent out to the campus from Josh Awalt, the interim assistant vice president for Information Technology Services, there has been an increase in these attempts over the past few months.

Calling them “brute force attacks,” the email reads that the impact of the attacks has been noticed because some Eastern email accounts have been repeatedly locked.

“While this has been inconvenient for those affected, it has been the one compensating control that is protecting these accounts,” the email read.

ITS is working to provide security controls to provide protection without locking accounts.

“As we roll these solutions out, ITS will keep campus informed of any changes to the current authentication process for systems such as Panthermail and PAWS,” according to the email. 

If an account does become locked, it could mean that there was an attempt to authenticate it unsuccessfully 10 times within 15 minutes.

If after 15 minutes the account is still locked, then call call User Services at 217-582-4357 for further assistance.

The news staff can be reached 581-2812 or at [email protected].