Cyber Security

What is Cyber Security?

Cyber Security focuses on protecting computers, networks, programs and data from unintended or unauthorized access, change or destruction.  Cyber Security is important because governments, military, corporations, financial institutions, hospitals and other businesses collect, process and store a great deal of confidential information on computers and transmit that data across networks to other computers.  With the growing volume and sophistication of cyber attacks, ongoing attention is required to protect sensitive business and personal information as well as safeguard national security.

Recognizing Spam & Phishing Emails

When dealing with email, it’s important to be able to recognize suspicious emails and to know what to do with them.

Some characteristics of suspicious emails (spam emails and/or those phishing for your personal information) include:

• Vague subjects, salutations, content
• Incorrect names, dates (e.g., far in the future), misspellings, mismatched names/email addresses
• Awkward wording/language/grammar, strong calls to action (e.g., Urgent!!!!!), long alphabetical lists of recipients
• Web links that don’t match the sender or are misspelled

What do I do With Suspicious Emails?

If you have a suspicious email, do not click on any links in it.  Instead, delete the email.  If you are unsure whether the email is legitimate or not, contact the IT Help Center.  If you accidentally click on a link in a suspicious email, contact the IT Help Center immediately.

Creating a Strong Password

Heritage University requires users to create passwords with a minimum of 10 characters including an upper case letter, lower case letter and a number within the password.  Passwords cannot be reused or include your first or last name.  To create a complex password, consider using a sentence acronym where you devise a sentence known only to you and take the first letter of each word, with some tweaks, to create your password.  For example: My cat sassy had eight kittens in two thousand fourteen.  This could be translated to: Mcsh8kittf or Mcsh8ki2014.