October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month and ITS will be undertaking several different efforts to raise awareness within the UIS community.

Next Tuesday October 4th at noon, Educause will be presenting a webinar entitled Cybersecurity as a Shared Responsibility: Stop, Think, and Connect. In this webinar, representatives from the White House, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Higher Education Information Security Council will discuss international and national cybersecurity strategies, the importance of cybersecurity awareness for both citizens and organizations, and the role that higher education plays in addressing cybersecurity challenges in an increasingly interdependent networked society. They will highlight the “Stop, Think, Connect” campaign that is being spearheaded by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and will also feature the SANS “Securing the Human” awareness materials that are being used by several institutions this fall in an effort to raise awareness among students, staff, and faculty.

ITS will be extending an invitation to the campus community to join together in the UHB 2008 classroom room to attend the webinar. Afterwards, we will open the floor up for a Q&A session to ask ITS folks and faculty from the Computer Science department any questions that may be on their mind about what efforts UIS is making in the education of the campus community and our ongoing work to protect our systems and information from abuse.

An e-mail will be going out to the campus community soon with more information. I would welcome any thoughts you might have on making this effort as successful as possible.

Curtis

P.S. We are looking for volunteers for other planned CyberSecurity month activities. If you’d like to help, please let me know.