Have you noticed that you’ve been receiving a lot of emails lately from companies suggesting that they’re trying to deliver a parcel to you?
According to Tom Renaud, it’s just one of the millions of online scams out there being used by hackers to access your accounts, steal your online identity, and do all kinds of nefarious things with it in cyberspace.
“The vast majority of security breaches where hackers get access to an organization's data come from these kinds of phishing attempts,” said Renaud, the WECDSB’s Senior Manager of Information Technology.
October is Cyber Awareness Month, a joint effort between Ontario school boards, the Educational Computing Network of Ontario and the Ontario Ministry of Education to raise awareness about scams like these and the steps people need to take to protect themselves.
Together, they’re encouraging participants to become a Cyberhero – to defend against the bad guys – the phishers, scam artists, and all the supervillains who pose a threat to cyber security, safety and privacy.
“It’s extremely important to draw awareness to this issue, and to educate both our staff and our students about the precautions they need to take,” said Renaud. “There are a lot of bad actors out there, and it’s very easy for people to become victims of their techniques, which have become a lot more elaborate and sophisticated. This can have severe consequences for both individuals and organizations, so people need to learn how to protect themselves from these outside threats.”
Together these organizations will be sharing content about this issue via social media throughout the month, but Renaud says protecting the board’s network is a year-round effort.
The board recently participated in a network security audit and is working towards beefing up the safety of its systems based on the recommendations it received. They’ve hired a person devoted to network security concerns and have implemented a number of measures, including steps like multi-factor authentication just for people to access their accounts.
“We’re trying to create the safest, most reliable computing environment possible,” Renaud said.