Colleagues,
I am writing to request that you encourage your staff members to complete the university’s cybersecurity training. Among the first modules is phishing, which is increasing in frequency. The university experiences thousands of attempted email-based cyberattacks daily. Faculty and staff who are successfully phished unwittingly cause a cascade of attacks throughout the system.
A case in point. On October 26, just four compromised university accounts resulted in 48,000 additional phishing messages to other accounts in a matter of seconds. While we noticed an encouraging number of reports to our office related to those phishing messages, many individuals replied to the scam.
The university has made a significant security investment to protect university data and assets and create a cyber aware culture. The increased investment will provide for more and more effective detection and isolation tools to prevent attacks. However, cybersecurity remains a partnership. The tools we have cannot make up for individual action or inaction. That is why training is vitally important--to personal privacy, research integrity, business plans and so much more.
Cybersecurity training is simple to complete and provides information useful in your work and personal life. Each module takes less than 20 minutes to complete. To reach the training portal, login with your NetID and password at https://go.uillinois.edu/securitytraining.
Please take this opportunity to thank those who already have completed the training—their diligence is paying off. Thank you in advance for sharing this reminder with your teams as we work together to improve the cybersecurity and privacy posture at Illinois.
If you have questions surrounding training, please email us here: securitytraining@uillinois.edu.
If you have questions surrounding prevention tools, please email us at securitysupport@illinois.edu.
To report a cybersecurity event, please email us at security@illinois.edu.
Joe Barnes
Chief Privacy and Security Officer