Mandatory Security Awareness Training for Faculty & Staff – Beginning October 12

Greetings Faculty & Staff,

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. This month, the Technology Solutions’ (formerly ACCC) Security team will be conducting comprehensive security training in an effort to raise awareness, share best practices, and educate the UIC Community on how to identify emails with malicious intents.

University policy requires all faculty and staff to complete information security awareness training biennially. In previous years, this training was administered by individual units. To relieve the units of that burden, and to ensure overall compliance, Technology Solutions will be administering the training for all UIC units.

This year’s information security awareness training will begin on Monday, October 12, and will need to be completed by November 13, 2020.

The training consists of approximately 45 minutes of interactive content and is designed to raise awareness of phishing and social engineering tactics. The university is targeted daily by attackers using these techniques, and awareness is one of the best ways to protect your accounts and data.

Please note, KnowBe4 is the name of the security awareness training company that will be supporting our training efforts. Please be on the lookout for the invite email, which will arrive from “KnowBe4 do-not-reply@training.knowbe4.com” with the subject “2020 Security Awareness Training: ACTION REQUIRED.” The Security Awareness Training link in the email will take you to a standard UIC login page that can be accessed by using your UIC credentials. As always, verify that you are on a UIC website in the URL bar before entering your credentials.

Once the training period is over, Technology Solutions will send out periodic phishing emails to campus faculty and staff. These emails will mimic real phishing attempts and contain links in an effort to get the recipient to click on them. If the links are clicked, the recipient will be redirected to a web page that contains helpful information on how they could have determined that it was a phishing email. If you suspect a phishing attempt, the best thing to do is to avoid opening the email or clicking on any links. Always review emails and links carefully, and attempt to confirm their validity. If you are still unsure, contact security@uic.edu.

The Technology Solutions Security team is committed to keeping the UIC Community safe from cyber attacks and hope these trainings raise awareness and emphasize the importance of recognizing phishing attempts.

Please contact security@uic.edu with any questions.

Regards,

Edward Zawacki, Chief Information Security & Privacy Officer

Jason Maslanka, Chief Technology Officer

For more information, please contact:
Technology Solutions (formerly ACCC)
security@uic.edu