August 2008 articles

8/27/2008 - Fraudulent E-mails Claiming to be from University Administration Reported

Several variations of fraudulent e-mail messages claiming to be from helpdesk, UIOWA Support, UIOWA.EDU, Webmaster@uiowa, etc. have been reported over the last several months. These e-mails claim you must reply with personal information, such as your password, or risk having your accounts deactivated. These are not legitimate messages.

ITS will never request your password be sent in an e-mail. Please delete the message if you receive it. These "spear phishing" e-mails are particularly difficult to block at the gateway because they are so targeted. However, ITS does its best to block these e-mails from coming through as soon as they are detected and to block responses to the address from which they are sent. If you accidentally replied to one to these messages with your password, change your Hawk ID password immediately at http://hawkid.uiowa.edu.

8/24/2008 - ITS Help Desk Labor Day Weekend Hours

The ITS Help Desk will be closed for telephone support for the Labor Day holiday weekend beginning Friday, August 29th at 5:00PM. The Help Desk will be open for walk-in support at the Main Library location from 1:00PM - 5:00PM on Saturday, August 30th and Sunday, August 31st, as well as from 1:00PM - 9:00PM on Monday, September 1st. Telephone and regular support hours will resume on Tuesday, September 2nd.

8/22/2008 - Special Help Desk Hours for ResNet August 23-24

The ITS Help Desk will be providing on-site support for students in University Residence Halls on Saturday, August 23rd from 9am - 6pm and Sunday, August 24th from 10am - 5pm.  The Help Desk will also be available to assist with Hawk ID password and ResNet issues by telephone (319-384-HELP) during those times. Regular telephone support will resume on Sunday evening at 6pm.

8/18/2008 - How to Back Up Your Personal Data

We are all only one computer virus, hardware failure, or user error away from potentially losing our important digital information, such as school work, pictures, music, etc. To reduce that risk, the ITS Help Desk encourages everyone to back up their personal data often. This can save you a lot of time and frustration if your computer has a major failure or has an issue that requires it to be reformatted. There are several methods for backing up your personal data. The Help Desk Personal Data Backup Support Center has more information on some of these options.

8/7/2008 - Travel Security Checklist Now Available

The start of the new academic year has arrived, and with the start of the semester brings the possibility of people in various departments on campus leaving on University related business (e.g. conferences/workshops). An emerging risk is the loss and/or theft of mobile devices, more so if the device contains University-owned data. What would you do if you lost your mobile device en route to a conference? In a bid to assist University travelers, the IT Security Office has put together a list of suggested security checks you should consider before you leave on your trip.

See http://cio.uiowa.edu/ITSecurity/bestprac/travelchkls.shtml for details.