October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and Stony Brook University is a registered cybersecurity awareness month champion! You can register as an individual champion to show your support for a safe internet and join us this month in paying special attention to improving cybersecurity at Stony Brook.

Will You Take the Bait This Month?

Each week this month every faculty and staff member will receive an internally crafted phishing email, starting from easiest to identify (level 1) and advancing to hardest to detect (level 4). We expect that by the time we reach the higher levels, almost everyone will click, but you can prove us wrong. Can you defeat the phish? Make sure to review this important tip sheet and our Secure Computing Guide for Faculty & Staff so you will be fully prepared for how to best identify incoming phishing attempts and try to be one of the few that will not get phished by the end of October! 

Avoid Email Account Confusion…use Stony Brook email only for SBU “business”

Most of us have multiple email accounts that we use personally and professionally. Using your Stony Brook email account for personal matters or using your personal email account for Stony Brook matters can open the door to a variety of cyber attacks. Also, you will likely lose access to your Stony Brook email after you leave the University. If a fellow Seawolf ever contacts you from a non-stonybrook email address about Stony Brook business, assume it is an attacker trying to trick you. If you have good reason to believe it is legitimate, contact the person via phone or some other method and ask them to resend the communication from their Stony Brook account.  

Cybersecurity Coffee Break Topics

This month we will be inviting West Campus Faculty & Staff to review a short but timely online module about mobile devices and social engineering. When you receive this invite, please be sure to complete the module before the end of October along with any other assigned training available to you when you visit https://safecomputing.stonybrook.edu. This email notification will not be part of our phishing exercise.

Contact Us 

As always, if you have any questions or need additional support, you can contact our department by opening a ticket at https://service.stonybrook.edu, or calling 631-632-9800. 

Thanks all and stay safe.