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Sanitizing Your Technology
Best Practices for Sanitizing Electronic Devices
Meltdown and Spectre
What is it? Meltdown and Spectre are two closely related security vulnerabilities that affect virtually all computers in the world. They stem from a flaw in the design of computer processors. The flaw has been present for years, but the discovery and exploit of the flaw was only just revealed last week (1/3/2018). Meltdown and [...]
Cybersecurity Panel Provides Good Insights
Technology Services - Student Affairs recently sponsored an event for Cybersecurity Month in cooperation with the Brazos Valley Project Manager's Institute and the Information Systems Security Association (ISSA) - a panel of local experts who talked about how got into a career in cybersecurity. Scott Smith from BTU actually started off playing baseball, while Jose Quintana [...]
Ransomware is BIG Business
Higher education has been targeted by the booming business of ransomware. Ransomware is, "...computer malware that installs covertly on a victim's computer, executes a cryptovirology attack that adversely affects it, and demands a ransom payment to restore it. Simple ransomware may lock the system in a way which is not difficult for a knowledgeable person to [...]
Two-Factor Authentication
Examples of account compromises are on the rise. Weak passwords are one culprit. Phishing (social engineering) scams are also rampant. Even programs such as key loggers which record the keystrokes you type and then relay the information to a third party who extracts out the resource and credentials are common. In this day and age, [...]
When Outsourcing Goes Wrong
Recently, we helped one of our departments (who shall remain nameless) identify an external vendor to help them with a website design. We were in the middle of an active development cycle and didn't have time to do the project for them. And so we were acting in the capacity of a consultant, whose responsibility [...]
Storied Past Meets New Technology
There's a great new service offered by TAMU Libraries. They have digitized the entire collection of Aggieland yearbooks and put them online, in searchable format with a nice browsing interface. Looking through the old yearbooks, reading their editorials and letters, one can get the sense of how our predecessors lived in Aggieland. Browsing the first [...]
EmpowerID Service to Be Retired
The EmpowerID service will be retired on May 1, 2015 which means you will need to use other preferred methods to reset and change passwords. For password resets, most users are contacting the Technology Services - Student Affairs Service Desk and moving forward this will be the preferred method to reset a forgotten password. [...]
New IT Site
Central IT recently launched a new IT site (http://it.tamu.edu/). This is a complete redesign of the old AVPIT suite of sites into a clean, slick, visually appealing, completely responsive website, designed with usability in mind. The communications team really outdid themselves with this one. I especially like the Services "A to Z" link which allows [...]