October is Cyber Security Month

For several years, the governments Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand have collectively launched international Cyber Security Awareness Campaigns with the objective of combatting cybercrime and educating citizens about online security threats.

McMaster IT Security is once again joining efforts to keep our community safe as well.

The focus of our campaign this year is passwords. A password is the most basic mechanism of security, and is often the only control protecting your private information.

In the coming weeks we will share tips and tricks to help you keep your passwords safe, and will provide some ideas to improve the security of the information that your passwords protect.

Watch the Daily News next week for our list of “Eight Ways to Improve your Password Security.” We’ll follow up with articles that dive deeper into password security and look at some of the ways your password can be lost and how to protect yourself.

If you ever want to change your MacID password, you can do so here: https://apps.mcmaster.ca/macid-self-management/password-change/index.htm

Keep an eye open for our posters around campus and, follow us on twitter @McMaster_ITSec where we will be sharing tips and interesting articles, as well as providing timely alerts to followers about threats to our community.

Visit the McMaster IT Security website for important information related to Internet threats and ways to stay safe, and to see how we are working to protect the McMaster University community: http://www.mcmaster.ca/uts/security/ITsecurity/index.html