CyberCrime is a People Problem – Raise Staff, Faculty, & Student Awareness

Resources to Help Protect Your School, Your Students, Colleagues, and Family

At the recent NYSCIO conference, Reg Harnish, CEO of Grey Castle Security, presented an eye-opening session, Colleges Under Attack: Cybercrime in Higher Education.

One point Harnish made loud and clear is that security and cyber crime are not technology problems, they are really people problems.

Take a look at the image above. Here we have a real example of social engineering – someone created this form and distributed it to lots of students, and not surprisingly, some of those students gave up their user names and passwords. People are tricking other people into giving up secure information every day.

One of the best defenses we have against this vulnerability is education. Learn more and help others learn what they can do avoid falling prey to the many ways we can be duped by cyber criminals.

Here's a selection resources that can be helpful for learning more:

• How Can I Protect Against Social Engineering Hacks? from LifeHacker
• Why Phishing Works And How To Avoid Becoming a Victim from Security Week
• Password Do’s and Don’ts from Krebson Security
• How to [a] Prevent Social Engineering Attack from UCLA's SEASnet Computing Facility
• 10 Tips on How to Identify a Phishing or Spoofing Email from ReturnPath
• Cyber Crime Prevention Tips from Norton

This is by no means an exhaustive set of resources. Do you know of other good resources to help keep us safe? Drop a comment and share, please!

So I guess Smokey Bear wouldn't be too far off the mark if he said, “Only YOU Can Prevent Cyber Crime!“. Go start learning and raising the awareness of your colleagues and your school's students!

Help prevent the ticking time bomb that is the next incident at your school.