Category: Newsletter
Wait, didn’t you just get a newsletter a few days ago? Yes, but that was May, and May is busy. It is now June and by the time you are reading this, I will be out of the office enjoying some vacation. I hope everyone is able to do the same at some point this summer. Whatever you do, don’t take a vacation from being cyber-aware and vigilant about protecting your data.
Welcome to this midweek and very late edition of the monthly newsletter. As many of you are aware, there have been major events happening in the information security and higher education world. I’m going to briefly discuss both of the top issues (in my opinion) in this newsletter. Be prepared for some irony, skepticism and inevitability.
By the time you read this, Easter will have passed and April will be in its second week! I hope your Easter weekend was great, however you decided to spend it. We are now in the home stretch for the spring semester. Before we change months again, classes will be over, finals will be happening and we will all be preparing for the summer break. It will be here before we know it. In this last month of the spring semester, I want to bring back to mind some topics we have touched on over the academic year.
Welcome to March and all that March means to our progress through the semester. This newsletter publishing during Spring Break is no accident. It is aimed squarely at faculty and staff. I want to take the opportunity to reiterate some cybersecurity awareness points I have been trying to make over the past few months. We’re not talking about good passwords or password managers or phishing (well, maybe a little about phishing). While all of those topics are important, I want to focus two other very important topics: improper uses of your Berry College email account and the safe use of your Berry purchasing cards, or P-cards. Recent activity exposed by our cybersecurity systems show alarming practices that need to stop as soon as possible.
The new year is hurtling along and February is upon us. We’ve rolled out Cybersecurity Awareness Training for the semester and I want to take this moment to thank the more than 150 users who have completed the training already. I designed it to be fast, widely applicable, and easy to complete. I hope you find it so. While I didn’t put a lot of content about phishing in the training course, I will take this opportunity to update everyone about the current state of phishing now that we have had generative AI around for years now.
Welcome to 2026! I hope your holidays were restful and enjoyable. Mine were very good, but of course, not long enough. The world kept on spinning while we took some time to relax and prepare for a brand new year. I gave you a month off from the newsletter in December, so I have plenty to catch you up on this month
Here we are in November already…fall is here, the holidays are approaching, the semester is starting to wind down and we’re done with Cybersecurity Awareness Month! Prizes have been awarded for scavenger hunts and completing training (for students). We had 17 people complete the hunt and 33 others jump into hunting down clues and learning about cybersecurity at the same time. I hope everyone enjoyed the hunt.