Vice President for Information Technology Status and Activity Report for February 2022 Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT) 1. Key Items for Faculty and Staff Meetings •
Security tools available for protecting sensitive or restricted data: The University of Georgia is committed to protecting the personally identifiable information of its students, faculty, and staff as its first and foremost business requirement for all IT systems. In many industries, higher education included, ransomware computer infections through web browsing and email are growing. Compromised passwords obtained through email scams or other fraudulent means also pose significant risks for UGA. Our best advice is to avoid, if possible, the collection, processing, or storage of sensitive or restricted information, such as Social Security numbers, bank account information, or personal health information. If handling this information is required for business purposes, the University has tools available to all units, discussed at http://infosec.uga.edu, that will reduce your risks associated with handling this information. For more information, contact Ben Myers, the Chief Information Security Officer, by email at bmyers@uga.edu.
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Stacy Boyles named interim director of finance and business services: Effective January 18, EITS Director of Finance and Business Service, Pam Burkhart, has retired, and longtime EITS Project Manager Stacy Boyles has stepped in as interim. Boyles has been with EITS since 2009 in various roles, starting out as a Business Analyst and working her way up to IT Program Manager. As an integral part of the organization, Boyles has led strategic planning efforts in EITS and has been responsible for managing the project management portfolio, ensuring our resources align with campus needs. She holds a Master of Education in Human Resource and Organizational Development from UGA. Departments who have questions about cost recovery services, purchasing hardware and software and other business services initiatives can contact Stacy Boyles at stacy.boyles@uga.edu.
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Plan for outages during March 5-6 spring network maintenance: EITS will conduct a network maintenance on March 5-6. Unlike previous planned network maintenances where outages were intermittent, this maintenance will result in a complete outage of service access. The network maintenance will result in complete outages of campus Internet access and campus information systems on Saturday, March 5 from 6:00 a.m. until noon on Sunday, March 6. Network maintenances are necessary to continue to support the network, allowing EITS to provide ample bandwidth and Internet capacity to the University in the future. EITS will also conduct the second planned maintenance of the calendar year on October 22, 2022. Additional details regarding the October 22 maintenance will be shared in late spring 2022. For questions, contact Chris Baines at cbaines@uga.edu.
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Phishing simulation to educate campus about email scams: In mid-February, EITS will roll out a new phishing email simulation to all employees, including student workers, using our new cybersecurity education platform, KnowBe4. The phishing simulation is an exercise instituted by the University System of Georgia to help educate faculty and staff on recognizing email scams. Compromised passwords exposed through email pose a significant risk for individual users, as well as USG as a whole. As part of the simulation, University faculty, staff and student workers will receive an email designed to look like a phishing scam to their UGAMail inbox. Clicking the links in the email will open a webpage on the KnowBe4 website, informing the user that they have clicked on a simulated
VPIT Status and Activity Report for February 2022
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