Category: Newsletter

and most everyone’s bank account is trying to recover from Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals. As we move into this season of searching for the best deals, figuring out how to purchase them all, waiting for packages to arrive and being very busy, let’s all remember that to cyber-criminals, scammers, phishers and the like, this season means something very different to them than it does to us.

Welcome to November! The end of the semester is vaguely in sight, but we have Thanksgiving coming before that happens. I hope everyone enjoyed the Halloween weekend, avoided eating too much candy, and are ready for the time to change this coming weekend. Yep, it’s coming…

I hope everyone is settled in and ready to take on the rest of the semester. I just want to take a few minutes of your time to welcome you to Cybersecurity Awareness Month (CAM) once again. This is the seventh year that Berry has participated in this international event aimed to remind everyone that cybersecurity is now an important part of our everyday life. Email, streaming services, phones, social media, Internet of Things devices, and even just Internet connectivity all require that we are informed, aware and responsive to the threats to our accounts, devices, and lives.

It is now September and believe it or not, all of you students are already expected to have just fallen into a rhythm and be moving along with the flow of classes and work. If you are not at this point, don’t worry…fake it until you make it! You’ll eventually figure out the balance of the three “S” components of college life as a student – studies, socializing and sleep. For those who are not students, welcome back to the school year, the time when you get to continue doing everything you were already doing AND have students back in classes, LifeWorks positions, and all over campus. Keep smiling everyone, even behind your masks. Real smiles really do show in the eyes, too.

Is it really August? We’re not even close to fall and yet, the fall semester awaits, looming in the near distance, only days away (or if you are a student and don’t read this until you arrive on campus, maybe only hours away). Another academic year is beginning, one of both hope and hesitance. We hope for a “normal” semester, but fear the rising noise of COVID!, COVID!, COVID!. Add this on top of all the “normal” start of the academic year worries and stressors and it is easy to get distracted.

You’ve probably been scrambling over the past few days to get all those “end of the year” things completed. I know I have. Just because the “new year” is starting doesn’t mean that we aren’t already in full swing with many summer initiatives, including the Governor’s Honors Program, preparing for the fall semester, hosting camps, and just getting those things that must be done outside of the semesters done.

With the arrival of June, summer is in full swing. Welcome to the time when everyone else thinks we as a college community have it easy, when we all know that is NEVER the case. Summer is always busy, busy, busy on all fronts, but I’m preaching to the choir here. Between projects, recruitment, alumni events, and yes, even classes, everyone has their hands full, which makes us all prime targets of phishers and scammers.

“You say that every month!”, you say. Yes, I do, but I usually give a new or recycled reason for why we are prime targets.