October is known to be National Cybersecurity month and here at Stevenson The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is promoting awareness to faculty and students.

OIT at Stevenson has been offering technical service to all students and faculty during this online period. During National Cybersecurity month, OIT has been reaching out to students to make sure they’re being safe and cyber smart.

Jim Bole, current Director of Information Security, detailed how OIT has been reaching out to the Stevenson community to raise awareness around key cybersecurity topics. He stated, “As a part of the national effort, they provided us the cyber-smart hashtag, and it took some time to think what would work at Stevenson. BlueJeans is the big one and is a new thing at Stevenson that we weren’t using last year.” Bole also spoke about the new policies around technology, general remote work security and most importantly “don’t take the bait,” which is a continuation of the fishing aspect OIT came up with last year.

With regards about being in this online period, OIT has been extremely helpful with BlueJeans. BlueJeans is the virtual video platform that has been a reliable source for all students and teachers so that the university can still continue to learn during these times. Bole spoke about how it was a big rapid change for students and faculty to be moved online, but Stevenson did a great job with the transition and have had no problems at all.

Also, during National Cybersecurity month, Stevenson has recently made all students change their Stevenson single sign on passwords. “The Stevenson single sign-on account is not only important to you but also to the university even more so since COVID-19 happened. As soon as you are unable to log in you can’t attend class,” said Bole. He also spoke about how students need to be patient with regard to changing their passwords, because it takes time for it to fully update so students can log on. This was the first year OIT forced a password policy on the student population compared to the staff who change their password every six months.

Stevenson OIT interns have also been working during National Cybersecurity month in order to spread awareness to students in the community. The policies they have been focusing on are acceptable use policy, password policy, software and cloud computing policy and remote access policy. Allie White, senior Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics major, with a minor in design and coding, has been working with Bole during this online period. She said, “I selected policies and procedures regarding OIT/cybersecurity. I have been reviewing the policies to ensure all of them are easy to read for students and staff and covers all information.”

For more information regarding help from OIT, email them at [email protected] or call at 443-334-3000.