Author Archives: Jennifer Wilkerson, School of Information
Though there has been much progress towards LGBTQ equality, this community has inherent risks online that other communities do not face. As experts in Cybersecurity, and strong LGBTQ allies, ITS Information Assurance wants to ensure those at risk of online harassment and crime have the information they need to protect themselves.
Pat Steffes is a senior software programmer analyst with ITS Information Assurance (IA). They are UM-Dearborn alumni and a passionate advocate for the transgender community in cybersecurity. They also enjoy supporting feminists and queer artists in the Metro Detroit area.
Skyler West is a data security analyst on the U-M Flint campus. In his role as a security unit liaison (SUL), he partners with ITS Information Assurance to promote security awareness, education, monitoring, and compliance, while enabling UM-Flint’s missions. In his free time, he likes to camp, cook, game, and garden.
With Black History Month winding down and International Women’s Day around the corner, ITS Information Assurance (IA) celebrates Black women in cybersecurity. In the face of racist institutional policies and segregation laws in 1940s and 1950s America, Black women, such as Annie Briggs, Ethel Just, and the Black “code girls” of Arlington Hall, blazed trails in a field… Read More »
Data Privacy Day (Data Protection Day in the EU) is on January 28! To celebrate at U-M, ITS Information Assurance (IA) is hosting privacy events throughout February. These sessions are intended to raise awareness, promote best practices, and provoke thought and conversation on privacy topics broadly relevant to our community members and society at large. Refer to the… Read More »
Having a presence on the internet in any form means there’s a real possibility you’ve faced online harassment or witnessed someone become a victim of it. A Pew Research Center survey found that 41% of Americans have experienced some form of this type of harassment, which is defined as the “pervasive or severe targeting of an individual or… Read More »
As headlines and research reports reveal, cyber threats are steadily increasing across all sectors, including higher education institutions. Higher ed’s decentralized, more open IT environments create higher risks, and allow for cyberattacks that can cause entire institutions to shutdown. At U-M, we take a layered approach to IT security. In addition to network protections, and advanced endpoint protection… Read More »
The capstone of the 17th Security at University of Michigan IT (SUMIT) event series was a thought-provoking presentation and conversation on digital protection of the press and at-risk individuals. In Adventures in Securing At-Risk People, Runa Sandvik and Elodie Vialle talked about their passion for helping journalists do their work securely. Runa Sandvik, founder of Granitt, has been… Read More »
The fall 2022 term has begun and ITS Information Assurance (IA) wants everyone to be prepared! As students and faculty get into the excitement of being back on campus and start to settle into the semester, it’s time to remind the U-M community of their shared responsibility to take steps to protect themselves and the university. View and… Read More »
Released over ten years ago, MCommunity recently went through a remarkable transformation! The MCommunity Directory replaced the legacy U-M Online Directory (UMOD) in the summer of 2011. A major driver for the replacement was that UMOD did not support authentication and managing access to U-M resources based on who is affiliated with the university and in what capacity.… Read More »
Remote access protocols allow a computer to talk to remote systems. They allow system administrators to remotely configure, maintain, and manage systems, and provide individuals access to essential applications and data. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, these protocols have provided needed convenience to users and system administrators who depend on off-site connectivity to campus resources. However,… Read More »
We live in a world of seemingly pervasive cyberthreats. From data breaches to ransomware disrupting business operations, to cyberattacks being a part of military operations, there are cyber incidents that make the news on an almost daily basis. The Securing the University of Michigan video explores the cyberthreats we face and the actions the university takes to protect… Read More »
Dissonance, Information and Technology Services and the Wallace House invite you to participate in a complimentary viewing of the film The Feeling of Being Watched, and accompanying post-viewing discussion. Algerian-American investigative journalist, filmmaker, and Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow Assia Boundaoui, grew up outside of Chicago, in an Arab-American neighborhood where most people believed they had been under surveillance for… Read More »
In early December 2021, the world was faced with yet another massive zero-day vulnerability, when news broke that Log4j was being used to perform remote code execution and provide unauthorized access to servers. This vulnerability was quickly exploited to do everything from crypto-currency mining to ransomware installation. Log4j is a piece of open-source software used by numerous vendors… Read More »
African Americans have served in the U.S. military since the revolutionary war, although the armed forces were not officially desegregated until 1948. Unfortunately, their service is all too often downplayed or not prominently known. One story that deserves highlighting is the cryptologic work done by William Coffee in the agency that would eventually become the NSA. Mr. Coffee… Read More »
ITS Information Assurance kicked off Data Privacy Month with a presentation on Privacy in Higher Education by Autumm Caines, instructional designer at UM-Dearborn’s Hub for Teaching and Learning Resources. Autumm set the stage for an engaging Zoom session by using compelling examples to shine the light on inherent issues associated with algorithmic profiling and predictive technology. She introduced… Read More »
On December 7, due to an outage with AWS US-East-1, the Information and Technology Services (ITS) Server Center’s Amazon Connect call center software could not receive calls or chats, leaving callers getting only a busy signal and chatters getting no response at all. While multiple systems were impacted (including Canvas, MiVideo, and Code42 Crashplan), the Service Center turned… Read More »
Not much compares to the feeling of watching someone you love open that new iPad they’ve been begging for, or the milestone of receiving their very first smartphone. Unfortunately, the excitement of new devices during the holidays can be eclipsed if those devices allow cybercrime to enter your home. Many households claim an abundance of devices, including computers,… Read More »
During the holiday season, people in the U.S. take about 15 billion trips between 50 and 500 miles away from their homes (as estimated by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics). Visiting family or taking getaways is an excellent way to celebrate a season filled with holiday cheer. Unfortunately, it is also the time when cybercrime increases, making it… Read More »
One of the many events held to celebrate October as Cybersecurity month was the Cyber Threat Brief with Scott Hellman from the FBI. This live discussion, hosted by Stanford University, centered on the most common cyber threats the FBI sees, how people are targeted, and basic methods to protect yourself. The amount of damage cyber attacks cost is… Read More »