Security Matters

Another successful Cyber Security Awareness Month has come and gone, and we had the pleasure of facilitating various outreach activities. We ran five unique initiatives, reaching three audiences: faculty, staff and students. Our two most successful events were our cloud security course and our pop up booth. The course, run by well-known information security expert, ...

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, a time to promote mindfulness and safe practices around users’ activities online. October also serves as the anniversary of the University of Toronto’s information security awareness and education initiative, dubbed “Security Matters”. This time last year, our team was rolling out its first initiative, the celebration of Cyber Security ...

Did you know that technology is currently in the midst of a paradigm shift? That shift is the rise of the “Internet of Things”. Just as in the 80’s there was the era of the personal computer and in the late 90’s there was the dot com boom, we are entering of a new era ...

A massive malware outbreak known as Petya is currently infecting computer systems in numerous countries across the world. Petya targets un-patched Microsoft Windows computers and then locks (encrypts) the machine’s contents from the user – pending the payment of a ransom. At present, the e-mail address used to pay the ransom is disabled making it ...

Last week we talked about why using the same password for all of your online accounts, password re-use, was fatal in the era of the daily data breach. This week we’re going to show you some ways to create strong, unique passwords and how to organize them. Making strong, unique passwords is tough. You’ve probably ...

On May 5th, 2017 a massive trove of 457,962,538 stolen usernames and passwords from various data breaches known as the “Anti-Public” list was uploaded onto the Internet for any criminal to use. It might surprise you to find out that online crooks freely share and trade these password caches, or that data breaches are practically ...

Originally published via U of T News Currently, no incidents of malware infection have been reported to U of T’s information security team since the WannaCry attack began on Friday. WannaCry targets unpatched Microsoft Windows computers and then locks the machine’s contents from the user – pending the payment of a ransom amount. WannaCry propagates ...

Ever get a computer virus from an e-mail? Know someone who has? The answer to both of these questions is usually a resounding “yes.” Despite the fact that e-mail has been around for a few decades there are a ton of glaring security flaws in one of the web’s most common mediums for communication. E-mail ...

It’s four o’clock in the afternoon on a Thursday. You’re over the work week hump, vacation day tomorrow, maybe. The phone buzzes. It’s Gmail, letting you know that your friend Joe has invited you to edit a Google Doc. You open the invite and click on the big blue “Open in Docs” button like you’ve ...

We are pleased to announce a new resource available to our community, the Phish Bowl. It is as simple as it sounds! As we spot phishing emails circulating U of T inboxes, we will post the message contents and a screenshot of the message to our collection of phishing emails in the Phish Bowl.  By providing a collection of ...