To assist in the battle against malware that daily threatens K-State computers, Web Reputation Services (WRS), also known as “Web Threat Protection Services”, was enabled last week in K-State’s Trend Micro OfficeScan for those managed by the central IT Trend Micro server. WRS augments the antivirus and antispyware protection already offered in OfficeScan to add another layer of prevention against the rapidly evolving, increasingly sophisticated, quickly spreading, and growing number of malicious threats faced by K-Staters as they browse the Internet.
Web Reputation Services works by checking every web address you attempt to visit in a web browser and blocking access to those found in a list of known malicious sites. WRS works with all major web browsers, including Internet Explorer and Firefox.
The next IT security roundtable will be 9-10:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 13, in Union 213 on how people are dealing with new malware threats being battled at K-State. This roundtable will be entirely a discussion format with no formal presentation. Join us to share your experiences with, and questions about, dealing with the likes of Antivirus 2009, malicious links in Google search results, and other puzzling infections seen at K-State lately.
Update: Last-minute date change from Friday, Feb. 13, to Wednesday, Feb. 18
K-State’s license for Trend Micro antivirus/security software expires March 31, so we are in the process of exploring renewal options. It is not an option to switch to a different antivirus vendor at this point, given the complexity and magnitude of converting. However, K-State does have the option of renewing for either one year or three years, and Trend Micro is offering attractive pricing for a three-year renewal.
One year after receiving the first spear phishing scam, K-Staters are receiving a flood of new ones in the last week. At least four people have given their eID password to criminals by replying to the scams. In three cases, the criminal(s) used the eID and password to login to K-State’s Webmail and send thousands of spam messages to off-campus sites, thus making K-State appear to be a source of spam and risk getting blocked by major e-mail providers like Hotmail and Gmail.
Remember one simple rule to avoid being a victim of this type of scam: K-State IT support staff will NEVER ask you for your password in an e-mail. Nor would any legitimate business. Thus if you get any kind of e-mail that asks you to reply with your password, just delete it.
A new semester has begun, so it is time to remind everyone of their personal responsibility in helping protect themselves online and keep K-State information and technology safe. To quote IT security experts, “the Internet is a bad neighborhood,”* and based on the number of security incidents at K-State in 2008, it’s getting worse. You can still function safely online, though, if you take the time to learn about security and “think before you click.” Here are five things you should know about IT security at K-State: Continue reading “Five things you need to know about IT security at K-State”→
New and upcoming IT security policies at K-State will be the topic of SIRT’s next IT security roundtable discussion this Friday, Jan. 16, 9:00-10:30 a.m. in Union 213. IRMC has been developing IT security policies and has passed several in recent months that affect everyone at K-State. Furthermore, the State of Kansas Legislative Division of Post Audit recently performed a follow-up review of a 2005 security audit with numerous policy recommendations that IRMC will address this spring.
While Santa was busy spreading holiday cheer and most K-Staters were enjoying a welcomed break, evil grinch hackers were busy trying to rob people of their digital happiness:
In December 2008, Mozilla released the last security update for all platforms of version 2 of the popular Firefox web browser (version 2.0.0.20 for Windows, MacOS X, and Linux). Version 2 has reached its end-of-life for updates, so all users of Firefox are urged to upgrade to version 3 as soon as possible. As always, K-State faculty/staff should talk to their IT support person before updating to version 3, in case they have special requirements for software installation on university computers.
December’s IT security roundtable will be at 9-10:30 a.m. this Friday, Dec. 12, in Union 213 on encrypting laptop and desktop computers with PGP Whole Disk Encryption software. Harvard Townsend, chief information security officer, will facilitate discussion on the following topics: Continue reading “IT security roundtable Dec. 12: Laptop encryption with PGP”→
