October News from Information Security

It’s National Cyber Security Awareness Month!

Woo-hoo!

Welcome to October! While it doesn’t feel quite like fall, the calendar says we are there. That means it is once again, for the sixteenth year nationally and fifth year here at Berry, National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM)! The theme this year is “Own IT. Secure IT. Protect IT.” The “IT” is intentionally capitalized, as it stand for “information technology”.

Information Security will be covering three information security topics every week of October, each based on an aspect of the theme. Articles will post each Tuesday, which means that one is posting the same day as this newsletter. There will also be a link to an information security awareness video. These will be short, humorous videos designed to quickly present an information security topic. We’ll also be hosting a table in Krannert every Thursday of the month, handing out information, answering questions, and offering either swag or edible goodies, or both, to everyone who stops by. That includes Halloween, so be ready for some edible treats that day.

We’ll also have a box at the table where you can register once each week to win a prize. The winning name will be drawn on Halloween, after the Krannert table closes at 1PM. The winner will be notified via email and will receive a bag o’goodies

Be on the lookout for the first NCSAM article, it will post shortly after this newsletter.

In other news, this site will now be posting information about third-party data breaches that involve Berry email addresses. For example, the textbook rental company Chegg experienced a breach that exposed information on nearly 40 million accounts. There were about 1600 accounts registered with Berry email addresses on the Chegg site. While a good portion of those are alumni accounts, current students were among the affected. Emails will continue to be sent to the community when breaches expose unencrypted passwords and/or action should be taken immediately.

Finally, you probably noticed that this site is undergoing a makeover. As we expand the scope of information we are providing and hope this draws more people to the site, we figured we should probably “de-uglify” it some. There will be more changes coming as the site is updated and more information and services are added. Keep checking back for the changes.

That’s it for this newsletter. We hope you come back to the site often during October and beyond to stay informed about information security.