We made it! We got through October, celebrating Halloween, the arrival of fall, and Cybersecurity Awareness Month all in a mere 31 days. Cybersecurity awareness training is over, the course closed on October 31st. More on that in a bit. October also brought us a rash of compromised student accounts, some targeted phishing emails from those accounts and a bit of chaos in the brag/shame leaderboards I produced to track faculty and staff progress in awareness training. The final leaderboard posted with this article is as accurate as I can make it. You can check it out toward the bottom of the article.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month is behind us and while all the articles were posted and the Virtual Scavenger Hunt was offered, there was one offering I was unable to get set up. I am still working on this and hope to offer it sometime this month. It was an opt-in tip-of-the-week email list that would send subscribers quick, timely and useful information about cybersecurity topics. Twice-a-year cybersecurity awareness training is great, but sometimes it’s useful to just get a quick review of a single topic in a concise email format. Please let me know if this is something you might be interested in, as that would definitely help me bump this up the priority list.

Congratulations to our Virtual Scavenger Hunt prize winners. Patrick Brandin won the grand prize of a Bluetooth speaker, and the weekly prizes were won by Leah Sherwin, Devon Smyth, Kim Melton, and Cris deRevere. The lucky student who completed their cybersecurity awareness training and was selected in the drawing was Kasey Griffin. They also will receive a Bluetooth speaker. I will contact every winner this week to arrange delivery of prizes, and just to notify them in case they don’t read the newsletter (gasp!).

During all of the chaos of compromised accounts, it came to our attention that there is a fair amount of activity in various messaging groups in the GroupMe messaging app, which is owned by Microsoft. These are not official Berry College groups and many are a part of the GroupMe Campus initiative. Students are able to connect to Berry related groups by validating their email address with GroupMe.

The problem with these groups is that it is possible to get into these groups and NOT be a student at Berry. Scammers rely on the illusion of trust in these groups to take advantage of students with fake job offers and other malicious activity. Always be skeptical of “too good to be true” job offers and other lures, whether they come via email, a text message, a phone call, or a messaging app. If you have difficulty spotting these, be sure to take your cybersecurity awareness training when it is available, and if it is not currently available (like now), you can always access the resources on this site to learn more.

Here is is – the final brag/shame leaderboard for the Fall 2026 Cybersecurity Awareness Training. We crossed the 70% threshold for completions with 572 users out of 808 completing the training. Thanks to everyone who completed the training!

Cybersecurity Awareness Training Leaderboard Fall 2026

Cybersecurity Awareness Training Leaderboard Fall 2026 – Final Standings

Department completion results as of November 2, 2026

808Total users

572Completed users

70.8%Overall completion

Green: 95–100%Blue: 85–94.9%Orange: 75–84.9%Red: Under 75%

Rank	Department	Completed	Total users	Completion
1	Athletics	51	51	100.0%
2	Advancement Office	22	22	100.0%
3	Office of Business and Finance	19	19	100.0%
4	Memorial Library	12	12	100.0%
5	Agricultural Operations	9	9	100.0%
6	Office of the Registrar	6	6	100.0%
7	Residence Life	6	6	100.0%
8	Digital Marketing and Media	5	5	100.0%
9	Human Resources	5	5	100.0%
10	Hospitality and Events	4	4	100.0%
11	Chaplain's Office	2	2	100.0%
12	Good Neighbor Culture and Community Engagement	2	2	100.0%
13	Oak Hill and The Martha Berry Museum	2	2	100.0%
14	Recreation	2	2	100.0%
15	Student Involvement Office	2	2	100.0%
16	Office of Information Technology	26	27	96.3%
17	Facilities Services	95	101	94.1%
18	Enrollment Management	21	27	77.8%
19	Campus Safety and Land Management	14	18	77.8%
20	Office of Marketing and Communications	7	9	77.8%
21	Student Academic Resources	12	16	75.0%
22	Dean of Students	6	8	75.0%
23	School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences	45	65	69.2%
24	Evans School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences	67	100	67.0%
25	Center for Personal & Professional Development	6	9	66.7%
26	Health and Wellness Center	4	7	57.1%
27	President's Office	2	4	50.0%
28	Campbell School of Business	24	51	47.1%
29	Counseling Center	5	11	45.5%
30	Charter School of Education & Human Sciences	88	198	44.4%
31	Office of the Provost	1	6	16.7%
32	Child Development Center	0	2	0.0%

Departments are ranked by completion percentage, then completed-user count, then name.

That’s all I have for November. I hope that everyone’s semester is going well, classes are not too terrible, and that everyone is able to relax and enjoy the Thanksgiving holiday at the end of the month. Let me know if you are interested in the opt-in tip email list. Just email me (infosec@berry.edu) or leave a comment on this page.

All Berry students, faculty and staff have MFA enabled on their Berry account, and you should use it in the most secure way via the Microsoft Authenticator app on your smart phone. But don’t stop there! Use the Microsoft Authenticator as your second factor on any site that supports Google Authenticator. Turn on MFA/2FA everywhere you can. Yes, it will take you another few seconds to log in, but your data and account will be safer.

Please continue to report those phishing emails! Avoid using “unsubscribe” links and report both spam and phishing via the “Report” button.

If I’m not covering a topic of cybersecurity you are interested in or concerned about, please let me know. I want to be your first and best resource on cybersecurity information, so tell me how I can help and inform you.

Check out https://support.berry.edu for more information about OIT and the services we provide. You can always check back here for warnings about current phishing emails, confirmations of valid emails you might have a question about, and data breach notifications.

Food For Thought

We’re back to music for the November Food For Thought. I found this band accidentally while doing a search containing the word “covet”. I will admit not all of their music is this good, but this tune is fantastic. Most of the music they do that is all instrumental and no vocals is good…in my opinion. I feel their songs with vocals are just not as good, but that is, again, just my opinion. They have a number of videos on YouTube – you can decide for yourself. Here is falkor by Covet.