Have you ever heard of the word ‘malicious’?
– characterized by malice; intending or intended to do harm.
(Oxford Dictionary, 2021 Edition)
It used to be listed on Year 9 Spelling Tests and would occasionally crop up in short stories when students were looking for outstanding adjectives to spice up their rather tedious crime narratives.
In 2022, the adjective ‘malicious’ is regularly used by ICT professionals when describing computer software that is designed to infiltrate your information, steal your data or generally cause a nuisance to your online existence.
The term ‘malware’ (short for ‘malicious software’) has even been listed in the Oxford Dictionary because of its prevalence worldwide and the devastating effect that it is having on the lives of anyone who turns on their computer for work, play or entertainment.
Scary statistic: In the last 30 days, eight million devices have encountered malicious software.
Even more scary statistic : 83% of these eight million attacks (that’s 6,640,000) occurred in the education sector.
Ok, so it is real and it is here.
But what should we be doing in SCEA to stop ourselves from being one of those six and half million people getting ‘malware’ into our Inbox this month?
Don’t reveal your SCEA username and Password.
- Any links to websites that are foreign to you should not be trusted.
- 60% of breaches within Australia are due to compromised passwords.
Update Your Personal details in ESS (Employee Self-Service)
- Keep the secure connection between your login and your information remain safeguarded at all times.
- This removes ambiguity for the SCEA HR Department as you are the person accessing your ESS records.
Update your software whenever possible – preferably once a term
- The older the software, the more likely it is to be breached or hacked in some way
- Don’t delay, update your computer today!
Finally,
Check the emails that come to you:
- Do I know this person?
- Does their email address look correct to me?
- Do I have royal relatives in foreign countries that want to give me one million dollars?
- Is this person asking for my bank details, even if it is to deposit money into my account?
Call 444 if you need help with any of these questions. Our SCEA ICT team is ready to answer your questions.
