October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Stay secure by observing the following best practices while on and off campus:
- Handle and safeguard business information like you would your own personal information. Business information containing personally identifiable and proprietary information should not be shared carelessly or sent using unsecured methods such as email.
- Don’t use your work email for personal use. Employees who use their work email address for personal use put organizations at risk. Many organizations have likely had their email credentials compromised without realizing it. The majority of these come from breaches of social media, gaming, and dating sites. These findings point to the fact many employees use their company email addresses to register for personal online accounts.
- Make sure you lock your workstation when you walk away. Using Microsoft Windows, you can accomplish this by holding down the Windows key, usually located lower left of keyboard, and pressing the “L” key. For Mac users, use Control-Shift-Power. For older Macs with an optical drive, use Control-Shift-Eject.
- Ensure your password is just as smart as the device used. We are all guilty of using our favorite password then adding numbers and characters to it. Instead, avoid using obvious personal information that can be found on social media. Use different passwords on different accounts. Try using a password manager to generate and store your passwords.
- Use the secure print option when printing documents. Documents will not print until you swipe your ID card at a printer to retrieve them, this prevents them from being left unattended. Secure print also allows you to print from your workstation and retrieve your documents from any printer on campus using your ID card.
Contact Mike Wilson at mikewilson1@cwidaho.cc or 208.562.3193 with questions or for more information, and stay tuned for more tips and information on cybersecurity awareness in future issues of Bert’s Alerts.