October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, an initiative of the U.S. government.  This year’s theme is “Secure our World”  and we have a mix of information and activities planned to increase awareness of safe computing. 

• Use complex and unique passwords or passphrases, along with a password manager.
  • HMC has a campus subscription for LastPass.  We encourage you to use it, or another good password manager.
• MFA – multi factor authentication is another layer of security needed to protect your online accounts
  • HMC uses Duo for MFA on our systems, and our CIS Help Desk can help you with this. 
• Recognize and report phishing
  • We ask everyone to report fraudulent messages in their email client (use the phishing hook in MS 365 and Google or forward suspicious messages to reportphishing@hmc.edu if there’s no hook in your mail client).
• Keep your system updated
  • We set all computers loaned and newly prepared for automatic updates of operating systems and browsers. You should do the same for your devices.

Here is an outline of the activities and information we have planned for the month of October:

Week 1 –  Information sharing via Cyber Survival Guide

Week 2 – Recognize our top participants for the last 12 months of Ninjio security awareness content

Week 3 – We will be testing your security awareness. 

Week 4 – Awareness wrap-up and support event for folks who need extra help with their systems

Other resources for 2023: