Welcome to the Network Security website at the IAS

This website is intended to bring you the latest news, how to's, tools and resources in Information Security.  Security Awareness of our Faculty, Members and Staff is key in creating a safer computing environment.

The three major Principles of Information Security, Availability, Integrity and Confidentiality, will be covered throughout the security awareness program at the Institute.  For a description of these principles, please see our About section.

In keeping with the spirit of the Institute, I encourage questions and open discussions about security.  And if you discover anything out of the ordinary, please feel free to bring it to my attention so that we can work together to create a more productive, safer environment.

Thanks,
Brian Epstein <security@ias.edu>
twitter: @epepepep

Recent steps taken to reduce phishing attempts

Dear Faculty, Members, and Staff,

Over the past few months we have seen an increase in the number of tageted attacks against the Institute's email systems.  In order to mitigate future attacks, Computing has taken several steps to better protect our email systems.  This includes realigning our spam and phishing filters to better match vendor best practices, and establishing outbound email throttling to prevent widespread distribution of spam from the Institute.

Following these changes, we also make the following recommendations:

Upcoming wireless changes this summer

Dear Faculty, Members, Visitors and Staff,

For your convenience, we have merged the functionality of the IAS-Scholar wireless network into the eduroam network.  If you haven't already configured your device to use eduroam, we recommend you take a look at the link below for instruction on how to configure it.  Accordingly, on August 7, the IAS-Scholar network will no longer be available.  This change will have no impact on the public IAS network.

What do you do when you find out that you are the spammer?

Submitted by ep on

Aww man, it's us

As a security professional, I spend a lot of my time making sure that the bad guys aren't able to break in.  I set up all the fancy firewalls and anti-virus to keep us safe.  But what happens when a user unknowingly gives up their credentials due to a phish?  Well, if you are lucky, the spammers just use it to spam the world.  If you are unlucky, the figure out how to attack the inside of your network to get to the crown jewels.

Information Technology Security Awareness Training by NJEDge

Submitted by ep on

NJEDge has released two Security Awareness videos, one for Students, and another for Faculty and Staff that reviews various topics in keeping yourself safe online.

Here are the links:

http://www.njvid.net/showvideo.php?pid=njcore:39068  Students

Thanks to NJEDge!

Lenovo laptops released with Superfish Adware - could lead to decryption of your secure web traffic

Submitted by ep on

The security community has been buzzing over Lenovo's gaff of including Superfish Adware with their Lenovo laptops.  Superfish comes pre-installed with a compromised root CA, which is by default installed into the trusted certificate store of system web browsers.

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