A Message from Rhonda L. Bishop

We’ve all received the emails and some of us may have, in a brief lapse of judgment, fallen for the ruse and clicked on the link…  It’s the email that claims we’ve won a prize, or we received a free trial to a much-coveted membership and all we have to do is click on the link to redeem. Or, it’s the email that appears to be from our bank suggesting that we have to update our account information. The ruse may change but the goal is the same – to be convincing enough to trick us into clicking on a link or opening an attachment to gain access to our data. Over the years the email scams, or phishing emails, have become much more sophisticated and convincing. It’s requiring all of us to be on high alert and places the burden on each of us to be extra diligent when responding to emails. Of the hundreds of emails that come in daily it only takes one click and we’ve allowed someone, or some system to penetrate our security and access critical and sensitive data about our students and/or our employees. To combat this threat the IT teams here at UCF are constantly monitoring our systems and safeguarding our data. But, they also rely on each of us to do our part. For this reason, we have devoted this IntegrityStar edition to data security and privacy. Please read the articles and watch the brief video to see what you can do to help us safeguard our data.

Thank you for taking the time to read the IntegrityStar. As always, we welcome your suggestions for topics as well as your feedback. Please write to us at complianceandethics@ucf.edu.