Do Your Part. Be Cyber Smart.
Oct 12, 2021The theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2021 is “Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart” – serving as a great reminder that it’s up to all of us to play our part in staying safe online. CU has joined hundreds of organizations across the country in becoming a Champion for this month’s promotion to increase awareness of online safety. Throughout the month, the CU Office of Information Security will host events including guest speakers and games (with prizes!) to help us learn more about preventing cybercriminals from accessing both our personal information and the university’s data.
At CU Denver | Anschutz Medical Campus, OIT teams work in concert to help ensure our university community stays a step ahead of the increasingly sophisticated cybercriminals. In the past year, there have been enhanced steps taken to protect students, faculty, and staff from potential threats such as the implementation of multi-factor authentication with Duo Security and additional email security protocols.
Stay Aware
Phishing scams – fraudulent communication that appears to come from someone you know – have been ranked among the top reasons for incidents and breaches in education, including CU. This week’s focus for Cybersecurity Awareness Month is fundamentals for shoring up phishing defenses. Read more about phishing and how each of us can recognize and prevent being a target on the OIT News webpage and Phishing webpage.
Cybersecurity Basics
Following are a few ways to protect your university credentials and personal information:
- Passwords. Follow the National Cybersecurity Alliance recommendation to create a “long, unique password. Length trumps complexity. A strong passphrase is a sentence that is at least 12 characters long.” And be sure to create different passwords for each of your online accounts.
- Need to change or update your university password? Go to https://passport.ucdenver.edu/passwordreset/ any time day or night to manage your password yourself!
- Email. Verify where a link goes before you click on it in an email message. Hover over the link with your cursor to see the destination website. If it doesn’t go to the right place or looks slightly off, don’t click. Trust your instincts and watch for the external email banner warning that alerts you to messages that originate from outside the university.
- MFA. OIT has implemented multi-factor authentication (MFA) with Duo Security to verify your identity and help protect your account from being compromised. Adding the Duo Mobile app to your mobile device and selecting Duo Push for authenticating is the easiest (just one click of that Approve green button!) and the safest option (the location the login is coming is from is included on the login request).
- Updates. Be sure you perform software, web browser, and operating system updates as it is one of the best defenses against online threats – it’s also best for functionality. Check here for supported devices and operating systems.
- Never provide your username and/or passwords to anyone. If someone is requesting your password information either on the phone, email, text, or any other means of communication, it’s a scam. No one from the university, not even OIT, will ever ask you for this information!
