CaTS Blog

CaTS understands that many faculty and staff have been, or will be, working remotely during these difficult times. Ideally, all university business should be conducted on a university-owned computer. However, during the current crisis that isn't always possible or realistic. If you must use a personally-owned computer, please keep the following in mind:

• Make certain you have up-to-date antivirus software installed on your computer
• Keep your system up-to-date by installing operating system updates
• NEVER save university data locally
• If you routinely deal with sensitive data, use VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) rather than VPN

If you have questions about keeping yourself secure remotely, contact the CaTS Help Desk at helpdesk@wright.edu. 

This change has been postponed until a later date still to be determined. 

On Tuesday, March 17, the University is consolidating account credentials down to a single campus username and password, and will no longer use the UID and PIN for authentication.

What Actions Do I Take Now?
As long as you know your campus 'w' username and password, you do not need to take any action. If you don't know your campus credentials, contact the CaTS Help Desk at (937) 775-4827 to recover them.

What Differences Will I Notice?
The primary difference you will notice is that you will no longer use your UID and PIN when logging in to WINGS Express. You will now be able to access WINGS Express by logging into WINGS and clicking the WINGS Express icon in the top righthand corner, or directly at wingsexpress.wright.edu and using your campus username and password to log in.

Other Important Information Regarding This Change
You will still have a UID assigned to you as a member of Wright State. If you are a current faculty, staff, or student and already know your UID, it will remain the same after this change. New faculty, staff, and students will still be assigned a UID, but there will no longer be a PIN associated with the UID.

You are still encouraged to know your UID, as you may be asked for it as a personal identifier when contacting departments on campus, ordering official transcripts, etc.

Questions?
If you have any questions, contact the CaTS Help Desk at (937) 775-4827, or email helpdesk@wright.edu. Please note that CaTS is unable to provide any account information via email.

Hello!
Welcome to the Spring 2020 edition of the Quarterly Security Reminders email, brought to you by Wright State's Chief Information Security Officer. This quarter's newsletter will provide you with information about Wright State's computing environment; hopefully you will find it somewhat interesting!

Recently, I have been thinking about how the Wright State community might view information security as it relates to our efforts here at the University. The information I'm sharing with you today is generated by a trusted third party that reports on how our computing environment looks, as viewed from outside Wright State's network.

The first item I'm passing on is a report which compares our rate of Botnet Infection against the Education Industry Average. As the report below indicates, in the past year we have had 3 computers that were infected with some type of botnet. A botnet is a number of internet-connected devices, each of which is running one or more bots. Botnets can be used to perform distributed denial-of-service attack, steal data, send spam, and allows the attacker to access the device and its connection. On average it took us 1 day to respond to the infection and remediate the issue, which is 61.5% faster than the average for higher education. The number of infections for higher education in the last year is 368, over 1 infection a day.

This may sound like I'm patting CaTS on the back, but actually this is an acknowledgment of the WSU community. Faculty and staff generally do a good job of reporting problems very quickly, so if the antivirus software and the other security systems don't detect a problem the faculty and staff do. The third party company gave us a grade of B.

Botnet Infections
Grade: B

Wright State University
In the top 20% of all companies

• 0 - This Week
• 3 - Past Year
• 1 - Average Duration

Education Industry Averages 

• 3 - This Week
• 368 - Past Year
• 2.6 - Average Duration

61.5% faster to resolve events than the Education industry average.

Just in case we're all getting too self-assured about our computing habits and how well we are doing, there's another area where our score isn't so great. This deals with unwanted programs that get installed on our computers that might pose a threat due to the nature of the program. The programs are not necessarily malicious but they collect lots of information about the user's browsing habits and often are not written very well. Nearly all of these programs are add-on toolbars for browsers such as Internet Explorer, Edge, Chrome, and Firefox.

As you can see below, our grade isn't great even though the number of events compared to the industry average is lower, as we take longer to remove the software. This may be due to people not realizing the software might be a problem, which is why it is important for us to provide you with security updates.

What can we do about this? If you see an unexpected tool bar show up in y our browser of choice, I strongly suggest it be uninstalled.

Potentially Exploited
Grade: D

Wright State University
In the bottom 30% of all companies

• 2 - This Week
• 187 - Past Year
• 4.6 - Average Duration

Education Industry Averages

• 8 - This Week
• 963 - Past Year
• 2 - Average Duration

130% slower to resolve events than the Education industry average.

Overall, I believe Wright State members do a good job of alerting CaTS to security threats that they encounter. If you ever have questions about IT security, you can always visit the IT security website, or contact the CaTS Help Desk at (937) 775-4827, or email helpdesk@wright.edu. 

Beginning January 6^th, the self-service Campus password reset function using the ‘Password Management’ link on the WINGS login page will begin requiring either a personal email address, or a mobile phone number currently on file for you.

This change will eliminate the need for your UID/PIN and security questions, and allow you to reset your Campus password through a process similar to your other personal, non-Wright State accounts.

To ensure we have accurate, up-to-date information on file for you, check WINGS Express by following the instructions listed here: https://www.wright.edu/information-technology/blog/article/updates-to-contact-information-in-wings-express.

Why is This Necessary?
This update is in preparation for the upcoming move to a single username and password to log in to many systems including WINGS Express. In the near future, when using the self-service ‘Password Management’ service you will have the ability to receive a one-time access code sent to an external, non @wright.edu email account, or a cell phone with SMS service.

Questions?
If you have any questions, or for assistance updating your information through WINGS Express, contact the CaTS Help Desk at (937) 775-4827, or email helpdesk@wright.edu.