Keeping Information Security Simple – Congratulations: You are a Risk Manager and a Systems Administrator – Know It or Not, Like It or Not

Letter from the CISO, Vol 2 Issue 11 Washington University Community: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility As Uncle Ben in Spiderman said to the young Peter Parker, “with great power comes great responsibility.” Thinking back to the way I learned to program computers in high school by writing FORTRAN code onto paper by hand, […]

Chance to Win $100 in Our Monthly Challenge

Trophy with five stars

The OIS is always looking for ways to improve your security and reward your participation in our efforts. This month, we want to point you to a couple of resources that will help you protect yourself from cybercrime and understand how our office can support you. We’d like to thank our challenge participants. We recently […]

Vulnerabilities, Threats, and Risks Explained

Threat, Asset, Vulnerability, and Risk

These three fundamental cybersecurity concepts are related but have distinct meanings. Security experts define these three concepts in a variety of ways, and the terms threat and risk are sometimes used interchangeably. This article’s definitions come from paraphrasing Computer Security: Principles and Practice by William Stallings and Lawrie Brown. Each term can be thought of […]

Scam of the Month: Phish Text “from Andrew Martin”

Hi Parker, let me know once you receive this text. Andrew D. Martin

The Office of Information Security has observed a trend in which criminals impersonate Chancellor Andrew Martin over text message. Impersonation is one of the most effective social engineering tactics used by scammers, and it can be particularly powerful when the person being impersonated is in a position of authority. If you see a message like […]

Meet Your InfoSec Team: Armin Toric, Information Security Analyst I

Headshot of Armin Toric

Armin Toric, Information Security Analyst I, is passionate about “protecting the university from cyber villains!” After attending St. Louis Community College and Ranken Technical College, Armin took advantage of CompTIA certifications and other cybersecurity boot camps. He took the initiative to obtain his Network+, Security+, and CySA+ certifications to build his skills around topics like […]