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Phishing alert: Zoom invite

Thursday, November 5th, 2020

Please be on the lookout for a new tactic that phishing scammers are employing to get your personal details, passwords and to gain access to your university account.

These scammers are using “Zoom” video conference invitations to fool their intended victims and steal passwords and other personal details.

 

Above is one such example. Take note of the highlighted the warning signs that reveal the scam. This particular scam is “custom” programmed for specific university e-mail addresses and might target your address, as the e-mail addresses are embedded into the phishing web page and the e-mail itself.

If you do get such an e-mail please report it to IT Cyber Security as soon as possible on the ICT Partner Portal.

If you have accidentally responded to the phisher and already provided them with your personal details, it is vitally important that you immediately change your password. Make sure the new password is completely different, and is a strong password that will not be easily guessed, as well as changing the passwords on your social media and private e-mail accounts, especially if you use the same passwords on these accounts.

After changing your password, also log a request on the ICT Partner Portal in order for your devices to be checked for malicious software. 

[ARTICLE BY DAVID WILES]

Annual Moodle maintenance

Wednesday, November 4th, 2020

Assessments and courses are running quite differently in 2020. As a result, the normal November/early December maintenance weekend has had to be adjusted.

Annual upgrade and maintenance period for Moodle will take place between 13 and 17 December 2020. This will include:

  1. SUNLearn
  2. StudentFeedback
  3. SUNOnline
  4. Learning Hub (USB)
  5. Schools (Telematic Schools Project)

Affected staff and students will be reminded of possible disruption in access, but the IT team will be working hard to ensure that this is kept to a minimum.

For lecturers, roll-over of 2020 modules will take place ahead of the scheduled maintenance. The CLT support team will communicate details of this to all faculties within the next week.

 

Safelinks protecting you against phishing

Thursday, October 8th, 2020

 In January 2020 Information Technology activated a preventative security tool called Safe Links to protect all staff and students from email phishing attempts.

You might have noticed that some of the links in your emails suddenly started displaying a very long link which starts with https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/ followed by the rest of the web link. This is an extra obstacle built in to our Microsoft security features which checks if a site has been listed as dangerous and prevents you from clicking on it. If you do click on it, you will see the following warning:

Definition of Safe Links

“Safe Links is a feature in Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection that provides URL scanning and rewriting of inbound email messages in mail flow, and time-of-click verification of URLs and links in email messages and other locations. Safe Links scanning occurs in addition to the regular anti-spam and anti-malware protection in inbound email messages in Exchange Online Protection (EOP). Safe Links scanning can help protect your organisation from malicious links that are used in phishing and other attacks.”  

With this added feature we eliminated some of the risk facing staff and students when it comes to phishing and other security attacks from hackers. However, this does not mean you shouldn’t still be vigilant when you open an email.

Familiarise yourself with the basic tell-tale signs of a phishing email. Think before you click on a link or open an attachment. Information Technology can only protect you up to a point, the rest is your responsibility – this is especially true in these times when you work from home.

 

 

Skype now more limited

Thursday, October 8th, 2020

In a previous article we’ve mentioned that Microsoft will no longer use TLS 1.0 and 1.1 after 15 October 2020 and that they will move over to TLS 1.2 for better security.

After the deprecation of TLS 1.0 and 1.1 on 15 October, Skype for Business will no longer show your Free/Busy presence and you will also not be able to use the address book. 

We advise that you Microsoft Teams for collaboration and chat features which were previously available in Skype for Business.

Staff who use the Skype for Business application for their office phone number will still have to use Skype for Business to make and receive external PSTN (Telkom, Cell phone) calls.  This functionality will be moved to Teams as soon as possible and users will be contacted in this regard.

Outlook public folders no longer available

Wednesday, October 7th, 2020

Since the end of November last year December public folders are no longer be an available functionality for staff. If you are still using public folders in Outlook to schedule meetings, for example, we recommend that you switch to alternative solutions.

What are public folders?

Public folders are designed for shared access and provide an easy and effective way to collect, organise, and share information with other people in your work group or organisation. 

Public folders are available in the following Outlook clients:

  • Outlook on the web (formerly known as Outlook Web App) for Exchange 2016 or later

  • Supported versions of Outlook for Exchange server.

  • Outlook for Mac 2016 and Outlook for Mac for Office 365.

What does this mean for me?

Although public folders were generally used at the university we now have alternatives which fulfil the same function possibly even better. If you are still using the public folders, depending on what you use it for, we would suggest that you enquire with the IT Service Desk regarding an alternative solution.

What are the alternative solutions?

Room or venue bookings can be facilitated by requesting the creation of a Resource Mailbox. For group collaboration, a team within MS Teams would be suitable for that use case as it allows members of the team to collaborate on documents and keep track of communication within the team.

[ARTICLE BY BRADLEY VAN DER VENTER]

 

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