Editor’s note: This is an ongoing story, and updates will be posted when more information becomes available.
A staff member at the Citrus College TeCS office accidentally deployed an operating system update to almost all computers on campus, many of which came back online unusable or with large amounts of data missing.
Citrus College’s technology operations and support supervisor, Tom Cheng, said that the reimaging issue occurred after a TeCS staff member mistakenly sent an operating system update that was meant for a small number of laptops to nearly all computers on campus.
The reimaging error has left many Citrus College employees without the files they need to carry out their jobs.
Citrus College’s chief information services officer, Bob Hughes, sent a memo to faculty staff and administrators at 1:13 pm after the incident occurred Sept. 8. The memo assured that the loss of data was not the result of ransomware or a cyber attack but was actually the result of an error made by staff at the TeCS office.
A second memo from Hughes was sent out later on Sept. 8, revealing that the TeCS team had inspected desktops across campus and concluded that a majority had returned from the process fully functional, with all files restored.
Hughes sent a third update to Citrus College employees Tuesday that said the TeCS team estimated between 75 and 100 computers had their hard drive completely wiped of all data, including an operating system needed for the computers to function. Some computers also were wiped of the software needed to connect with wireless printers on campus.
The TeCS office is in some cases replacing computer hard drives to give employees a functional computer, while they work to recover the lost data using data recovery software.
Cheng said the TeCS office has added additional safeguards to make sure that a mistake like this never happens again
“This shouldn’t have happened in the first place, we learned from our mistake,” Cheng said.
For computers that did not fully recover or are inoperable, the TeCS team asks that those affected submit a service ticket via the TeCS IT support link or call their help desk at (626) 857-4100. The TeCS office recommends that Citrus College employees store all data on a centrally managed server to prevent data from being lost in the future.
