October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and Vanderbilt IT is launching its annual campaign to make the university community aware of various security issues and how to respond to each through a series of blog posts.
New posts will be published Thursdays on the VUIT News Blog throughout the month of October.
The first post focuses on phishing. A phish is made to look like an official email, be it from a friend, a business, or even an organization. The email can come from a phony email address that may only be one or two characters different from the real account, or it can come from a real account that has already been compromised.
Phishing attacks continue to pose threats to education and health care institutions in particular. The simplest way to protect yourself from a phishing attack is by securing your passwords and other personal information. Many times, though, emails and websites appear to be legitimate, and we unknowingly hand our passwords to phishers and hackers ourselves.
If there is ever a question about the legitimacy of an email, please contact the VUIT Help Desk at (615) 343-9999, your local support provider, or VUIT Incident Response to verify the suspicious email’s legitimacy.
Remember:
- Never give your ePassword to anyone.
- Never click on links or open attachments in emails unless you verify that the sender is who they claim to be and acknowledges sending the email.
- Never submit your credentials to an unverified website.
Please check the VUIT News Blog frequently to stay abreast of the tools you can use to protect yourself not only from phishing, but other types of vulnerabilities as well. For additional general information about phishing and how to protect yourself, contact VUIT Incident Response at vuit.incident.response@vanderbilt.edu.