National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) is underway! Our month of activities began with the annual Shred IT event on the School of Medicine Campus. On Tuesday, October 1, members of our community brought 1,025 pounds of paper and 4,457 pounds of electronics to the School of Medicine campus to be securely destroyed and recycled. This event was co-sponsored by the Office of Sustainability, the Operations and Facilities Management Department, and the Office of Information Security. Working together, we achieved multiple complementary goals. Specifically, we managed sensitive data and equipment securely, and we did so by using environmentally responsible strategies. In Spring 2020, we will host a second Shred IT event on the Danforth campus.
Among the many events we have planned for NCSAM, one will be of particular interest to the IT community. Join us on Wednesday, October 23, from 11 am to 12 pm in Moore Auditorium on the School of Medicine campus for light refreshments and insights from information security manager Brian Allen, who will speak about “Topics in Security: A Round-Up of Incidents at WashU.”
Allen says the two best things we can do to avoid having our accounts compromised are to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) whenever possible and use a password manager to create and store secure passwords. Password managers make it easy to generate strong and unique passwords for all of our accounts. Additionally, they can serve as a single, secure location for important details like personal information or credit card numbers. This article from the New York Times and Wirecutter does a good job of explaining the benefits and highlighting a couple of well-regarded options for the password management software itself.
There are not currently any upcoming events scheduled. Please check back for new events to be added.
In the meantime, if you'd like to explore campus events, please visit Happenings at WashU.