Protect yourself from Ransomware - some common sense rules

There has been a national increase in a type of Cyber Security Incident that you need to know about. Ransomware is a type of computer malware that encrypts a users’ data files and demands a monetary payment to decrypt them.

What Happens?

• A College user receives an email with an attachment and a seemingly credible message to open the attachment. This email may seem to come from a trusted source.
• The user opens the attachment and often enables macros.
• The ransomware installs itself and begins to encrypt files on all drives connected to the computer (local, USB, and network drives).
• The users computer wallpaper is then changed with instructions for paying the attacker in order to decrypt the files.

Why this is bad?

• Ransomware will attempt to encrypt network drives attached to the target machine, meaning just a few users can impact everyone since shared files on the network will be encrypted.
• Access to the data is removed as these files cannot be decrypted without the attacker providing information.

What should I do about it?

Be proactive

• Do NOT open unsolicited attachments in email.
• Do NOT enable macros in email attachments from anyone.

Act immediately if you think you are a victim

If you notice this behavior on your workstation...

• Do NOT contact the attacker!
• Contact the help desk at 251.380.2276 immediately.

Please direct any questions or concerns to the SHC IT Helpdesk at 251.380.2276 or helpdesk@shc.edu

Chrome Browser drops support for certain plug-ins

As of September 1, 2015, Google Chrome will stop supporting an older version of the plug-in architecture known as NPAPI.

The following are the most popular NPAPI plug-ins used in Google Chrome:

Silverlight
Google Talk
Java
Facebook
Unity
Google Earth

The adoption rate of these plug-ins has dropped over the years, so it is unlikely you will be affected. If you find that a Website you visit stops working, try using another browser such as Firefox until the sites move away from using the deprecated, and potentially insecure NPAPI architecture.

More information is available on the Official Chromium Blog. http://blog.chromium.org/2014/11/the-final-countdown-for-npapi.html

Stop showing up early for meetings! Fix your calendar timezone.

Have you showed up for a meeting an hour early since the time change on March 8? If so, you may have never set the proper timezone in your Google Calendar.

Here's how to do it:

 From the Settings menu (1) select Settings(2).

Ensure that the Country is set to United States (1) and the time zone is set to Central Time (GMT-6:00) (2).

All done. Enjoy your extra hour of sleep.

Getting started with SHC email

Spring Hill College uses Google Apps for Education to provide email and other services to our campus users. If you've never used Gmail, here's a quick screencast to guide you through the login process.

Adding an image to your Gmail signature

Here's a quick video tutorial on how to add a signature image to your SHC Gmail account.

You can copy/paste the logo image URL from here:
http://www.shc.edu/media/common/logo/shclogo.png

Filter Google Calendar Invitation Responses from your Inbox

If you send a lot of calendar invitations, especially for events with a lot of attendees, you may get tired of deleting the emails you get back when someone responds to your meeting invitation.

It's fairly easy to set up a filter in Gmail that will take those response emails out of your inbox, or delete them altogether.

What the heck are Labels in Gmail and why should I care?

"Labels" in Gmail. Gmail users love 'em, Outlook users hate 'em, at least at first.

The great thing about labels is you can use them exactly like folders, but why would you want to? Labels are much more flexible and offer some distinct advantages to the antiquated notion of folders.