Recently Adams State University students have received phishing emails asking for you to verify your account by responding with your username/password or by clicking a link.
Phishing emails are fraudulent emails designed to trick you into disclosing personal information. Adams State University and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your username/password, Social Security number, or confidential personal information. Be suspicious of any email message that asks you to enter or verify personal information, through a website or by replying to the message itself. Never reply to or click the links in a message. If you think the message may be legitimate, go directly to the company’s website (i.e., type the real URL into your browser) or contact the company to see if you really do need to take the action described in the email message.
If you see a message in your inbox that you have identified as phishing please report it through the Gmail web interface.
1. Sign in to Gmail.
2. Open the message you’d like to report.
3. At the top-right corner of the message, click the down arrow next to the “Reply” button.
4. Select Report Phishing.
As the fall semester gets underway, I’m writing to remind you of the risks involved with illegal downloading and/or sharing of copyrighted music, movies, games and software over the Internet. Unauthorized obtaining, sharing or offering such copyrighted material is illegal and in violation of U.S. copyright law. If caught, you may face severe civil and criminal penalties, including prison and monetary damages. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages of up to $30,000 for each work and, if found to be willful, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. Movie and recording companies actively monitor the Internet to identify individuals who are illegally downloading and/or sharing movies and music via peer-to-peer networks.
ASU fully complies with Federal law and takes prompt action when notified that one of its students may be illegally downloading and/or sharing copyrighted material. University Policy 500-008, Unauthorized Downloading and File Sharing of Copyrighted Digital Materials, is located on the ASU Computing Services Website, at http://www.adams.edu/administration/computing/policies/policies.php. If caught, ASU penalties could include loss of access to the campus computer network, disciplinary action and in extreme cases, expulsion from the University.
You may think that the large movie or recording companies won’t bother prosecuting a single university-student downloading or sharing copyrighted material. Think again. Organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America are serious about protecting their copyrighted material. In 2009, a Boston University graduate student was ordered to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading and distributing 30 songs. This comes out to $22,500, per incident, of copyright infringement. There are a number of online sources that provide legal alternatives for downloading or otherwise acquiring copyrighted material. A listing of many of these sites can be found at: http://www.educause.edu/legalcontent.
If you have specific questions regarding ASU’s Unauthorized Downloading and File Sharing Policy please contact the
We are now well into National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Remember, you can always check the Stay Safe Online NCSAM website for more information and tips!
www.staysafeonline.org/ncsam
Cyber security is all about keeping your information safe, including your financial and personal information. In addition to keeping it secure, its important to keep it backed up!
Ever lost your phone or tablet? Ever accidently washed a flash drive, that just happened to have an important copy of a paper?
A backup is a second copy of all your important files – for example, your family photos, home videos, documents and emails.
Instead of storing it all in one place (like your computer), you keep another copy of everything somewhere safe.
All students have free storage space on our Adams State file server, which is backed up by Computing Services every night. In addition to being accessible in the student labs, you can access your files anywhere via a web browser.
Check out our how-to on how to use it:
http://goo.gl/6OSOG6
You can also store multiple copies of your files on Google Drive. All ASU students get 30 GB on their student Google Drive free.
For more information on backups, check out World Backup Day’s website:
http://www.worldbackupday.com/
If you would like more information on any of our services please let us know!
NCSAM, now in its 11th year, was create to help everyone have the resources to stay safe and secure online.
Cyber security awareness is needed now more than ever! There have been many data breaches in the news recently, credit cards exposed at Target and Home Depot to the Heartbleed and Shellshock vulnerabilities.
So what can you do to protect yourself and our university online? An excellent first step in protecting your privacy is selecting strong passwords. It is important that passwords be long and strong instead of short and sweet, with a combination of numbers, special characters, and lower/uppercase letters.
With all of these requirements, how do you pick a strong password that is easy to remember? Check out this quick video to find out how!
Or, check out our how-to for more tips and tricks on choosing and remembering good passwords, including a secure way to store them! (hint, its not on a sticky note)
Just as important as choosing a strong password is using unique passwords for EVERY site you visit. That way even if a site does get compromised, that password can’t be used to access your bank, credit cards, or social media sites.
IMPORTANT
It is a violation of ASU policy to share your password with anyone. This includes signing into a computer with your ASU account and allowing someone else to use your workstation. All employees, including work studies, should use their own account.
If you need an account for training or an event Computing Services is happy to set one up for you!
As the fall semester gets underway, I’m writing to remind you of the risks involved with illegal downloading and/or sharing of copyrighted music, movies, games and software over the Internet. Unauthorized obtaining, sharing or offering such copyrighted material is illegal and in violation of U.S. copyright law. If caught, you may face severe civil and criminal penalties, including prison and monetary damages. Anyone found to have infringed a copyrighted work may be liable for statutory damages of up to $30,000 for each work and, if found to be willful, that amount may be increased up to $150,000 for each work infringed. Movie and recording companies actively monitor the Internet to identify individuals who are illegally downloading and/or sharing movies and music via peer-to-peer networks.
ASU fully complies with Federal law and takes prompt action when notified that one of its students may be illegally downloading and/or sharing copyrighted material. University Policy 500-008, Unauthorized Downloading and File Sharing of Copyrighted Digital Materials, is located on the ASU Computing Services Website, at http://www.adams.edu/administration/computing/policies/policies.php. If caught, ASU penalties could include loss of access to the campus computer network, disciplinary action and in extreme cases, expulsion from the University.
You may think that the large movie or recording companies won’t bother prosecuting a single university-student downloading or sharing copyrighted material. Think again. Organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America are serious about protecting their copyrighted material. In 2009, a Boston University graduate student was ordered to pay $675,000 for illegally downloading and distributing 30 songs. This comes out to $22,500, per incident, of copyright infringement. There are a number of online sources that provide legal alternatives for downloading or otherwise acquiring copyrighted material. A listing of many of these sites can be found at: http://www.educause.edu/legalcontent.
If you have specific questions regarding ASU’s Unauthorized Downloading and File Sharing Policy please contact the
Google Apps has launched a new feature aimed at keeping our Adams State University accounts safe from hijackers, even if they attained a user’s username and password.
Upon login to your ASU Google Apps, such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, or Student Gmail, you will be prompted to provide a phone number. This phone number will only be used by Google to send a verification code if there is a suspicious login to your account so they can verify your identity.
The number will ONLY be used if when there is a suspicious login. Most people get less than 3 verification prompts per year.
If you do not want to enable verification for your account you may skip it. Simply click the “skip” link on the verification code page.
For more information, including screenshots of what the page will look like, please check out this Google Support link:
The following maintenance activities will take place tonight, Thursday June 19th during our normally scheduled maintenance window:
At 9:00 PM Computing Services will be installing security patches on employee computers for the following programs: Internet Explorer 11, Adobe Reader, Firefox, Thunderbird and Opera. Employees are encouraged to log out but leave their computers turned on to aid in the successful installation of these patches.
Beginning at 9:00 PM and lasting roughly 3 hours, we will be performing various security updates on all networking and web services. There may be very brief outages as we reboot the systems, but user impact should be minimal.
Computing Services thanks you for your patience and understanding as we perform these critical maintenance activities. As always, if you have any questions, please call the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu
Thank you!
Computing Services
Comments Off on Google Account Verification and CS Maintenance for Thursday, June 19th, 2014
Computing Services would like to give one final reminder that ALL students and employees will be required to change their passwords before tomorrow, May 14, 2014. If the password for your account has not been changed by that date, your account will be locked out.
All users can change their passwords by visiting www.adams.edu, clicking either Faculty/Staff (for employees) or One Stop (for students) and clicking the `Change your password’ button. As a reminder, we will NEVER ask you to share your username or password through email!
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See our helpful how-to on picking a strong password!
If you have any questions regarding password changes or heartbleed please contact the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741 or at computingservices@adams.edu
Computing Services would like to remind you that our systems have been patched against the Heartbleed vulnerability and that ALL students and employees will be required to change their passwords.
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Employees and students have until May 14, 2014 to change their passwords. If the password for your account has not been changed by that date, your account will be locked out.
All users can change their passwords by visiting www.adams.edu, clicking either Faculty/Staff (for employees) or One Stop (for students) and clicking the `Change your password’ button. As a reminder, we will NEVER ask you to share your username or password through email!
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See our helpful how-to on picking a strong password!
http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Password_Tips
See our YouTube video on Heartbleed, Password Changes, and more!
If you have any questions regarding password changes or heartbleed please contact the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741 or at computingservices@adams.edu
Thanks!
ASU Computing Services
Find us on Facebook and Google+
https://www.facebook.com/asucomputingservices
https://plus.google.com/107573503149101561873
Comments Off on IMPORTANT REMINDER – Mandatory Password change for all Faculty, Staff, and Students by May 14
Computing Services invites you to come chat with us on what is new with ASU technology! To better accommodate everyone’s busy schedules, we have scheduled three different time slots in which we will be giving a short presentation covering:
-Heartbleed: What is it and what does it mean for you?
-Password Change: How to pick a good password as well as training on Password Gorilla and KeePass Password Managers
-Gmail for Faculty/Staff? We want your input on a proposed move to Gmail
-Q and A sessions and more!
Presentation Schedule
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MCD 101
Tuesday 4/22/14 at 1:00pm
Wednesday 4/23/14 at 6:00pm
Thursday 4/24/14 at 11:am
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We encourage all staff, faculty, and students to attend one presentation. We will also be recording the presentations and making them available online on our Youtube channel.
Can’t get away from your desk? You can also watch the presentations live on our ASU Computing Services Google+ page!
https://plus.google.com/107573503149101561873
Hope to see you there!
Computing Services
Comments Off on What’s new with ASU Technology? Computing Services Presentation Invite
As mentioned in last week’s email, Computing Services has now finished taking all actions to patch our systems due to the Heartbleed security vulnerability. Now that our systems are patched, ALL students and employees will be required to change their passwords. This is a direct result of the type of vulnerability that Heartbleed exposed. Your account cannot be considered fully secure until you have reset your password. Although there is no indication that our systems have been exploited, all passwords must be changed on our systems if there is even a chance they could have been compromised.
*****Employees and students have until May 14, 2014 to change their passwords. If the password for your account has not been changed by that date, your account will be locked out.
All users can change their passwords by visiting www.adams.edu, clicking either Faculty/Staff (for employees) or One Stop (for students) and clicking the `Change your password’ button. As a reminder, we will NEVER ask you to share your username or password through email! ******
If you have any questions or concerns, or would like assistance in going through the password reset process, please contact the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741. You may also stop by the Helpdesk Monday through Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and we will have one of our technicians help you with the process.
***Password Guidelines***
When you change your password you will need to choose a new, unique, and strong password. Please see our helpful How-To on creating a strong password, including some dos and don’ts:
http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Password_Tips
What NOT to do when choosing a Password:
-Do NOT choose a password based on personal data that is easily obtained, such as your name, username, address, your pet’s name, or your favorite sport.
-Do NOT use a password that is a word in the dictionary or as keyboard sequence, such as QWERTY or 12345.
-Do NOT choose a password that is a simple transformation of a word. For example, password123 is not a good password, since 123 is a common, simple transformation of a word.
-Do NOT use the same password for multiple systems. If you use a password for your ASU account you should not re-use that password on personal sites, such as banking or social media. Every site should use a unique password.
-We strongly recommend using a password manager. Details on the recommended password managers can be found in the password tips link above.
***Got questions? Come talk to CS staff at a technology update discussion session***
All students and employees are invited and encouraged to attend a briefing by the Computing Services staff next week that will provide further information regarding the Heartbleed vulnerability, and share secure password management practices. A follow-up email will be sent out shortly with the dates and location of these meetings.
***More information regarding Heartbleed***
What is heartbleed?
Heartbleed is a vulnerability in OpenSSL that lets an attacker read the memory of a web server, which could include information such as usernames, passwords, emails, and credit card information. Some ASU services use OpenSSL, which is why we are forcing a password change for all our users.
Should I change all my passwords?
If the website you use also used OpenSSL, then you should change your password. CNET has a list of the top 100 websites, including if they were vulnerable, if they have been patched, and if you need to change your password.
