By Benjamin Davis / The Jambar
For Youngstown State University, October serves as Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Throughout the month, YSU’s Information Technology Services are promoting awareness of cybersecurity practices on a number of topics.
Daniel Yoder, information security engineer, said cybersecurity has become a top priority for IT services at YSU.
“When we’re designing stuff — whether it be for students, for staff, for faculty, whoever it is, security comes first when it comes to implementation, especially now,” Yoder said. “Now that the semester is well underway, it’s pretty important to keep best security practice at the forefront.”
As part of IT Services promotion of cybersecurity, Yoder said short informative videos discussing security topics were created.
“They’re four minutes long and they cover a specific security topic, whether it be social engineering, or malicious links — stuff to look out for with phishing emails,” Yoder said. “Any security topics, it breaks it down, it makes it really easy to understand and they’re really entertaining too.”
Yoder said an advantage of the videos is their short length makes them easy to watch for anyone with a busy schedule.
“It’s not something that’ll take up your entire afternoon,” Yoder said. “It’s not like you have to schedule a whole hour for a training session. It’s just a quick, four-minute video, and that’s what we have set up for faculty and staff.”
Yoder said hackers who perpetrate cyberattacks care most about the monetary value that can be gained from leveraging sensitive data.
“You’ll see attacks on banks or other private institutions where they’ll take sensitive data, and hold it behind an encryption key,” Yoder said. “[They’ll] say, ‘Hey, can you pay us so-and-so amount of dollars, and we’ll give you the key back.’”
Since universities retain students’ private information, Yoder said maintaining cybersecurity is IT’s goal.
“All student records are very private … they’re covered by federal law, [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act], so we have to be really careful with that,” Yoder said. “We have employee data, all kinds of personal information … it’s all worth protecting and that’s our goal.”
Yoder said IT Services is hosting a cybersecurity event open for students called Coffee and Cookies with the chief information security officer.
“It’s going to be on Wednesday, Oct. 22 from noon to 1 p.m. It’s gonna be in the Williamson College of Business [Administration], Room 3422,” Yoder said. “It’s basically just … a little talk about how you can protect yourself and your daily workflows, whatever people are doing, whether it be students, faculty [or] staff.”
Cybersecurity Awareness Month will continue through the remainder of October. IT Services can be found on the fourth floors of William F. Maag, Jr. Library and Meshel Hall.
