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.

We are well aware of the growing risks of working online – whether it’s at our offices or at home as we’ve been doing recently. The downside of working from home is that it opens opportunities for cyber-attacks and security risks are higher.  You can easily fall prey to these security risks when there are more distractions and concerns than usual while working from home.

To protect our staff and students from security attacks in our current situation, as well as when we return to our offices one day, it is important to implement extra security measures. Information Technology has been researching and testing multi factor authentication or MFA over the past few months as an additional measure to protect personal information and data. Read more about MFA here or watch the explanatory video by tech expert Tom Scott.

In short, this will mean that, for certain services, you will be prompted to provide more information in order to authenticate your identity as a Stellenbosch University student or staff member. 

By mid-August all staff and students will be required to use multi factor authentication to secure their information and the university network. Although MFA is not mandatory at the moment, you can already enrol by​ following these steps.

If you have any questions first consult our FAQs and if this does not answer your question, please log your request on our ICT Partner Portal and a technician will contact you.