by Sylvia Bass | Mar 18, 2025 | Home Page News, News
In our increasingly digital world, video conferencing has become an essential tool for work, education, and social connections. However, this shift has also brought security challenges, with “Zoom bombing” emerging as a significant concern.
What is Zoom bombing?
Zoom bombing occurs when uninvited participants gain access to a video conference call, typically on platforms like Zoom. These intruders often disrupt meetings by sharing inappropriate content, making loud noises, or flooding the chat with unwanted messages.
Why is it a problem?
These intrusions can be more than just annoying – they can expose participants to offensive material, compromise sensitive information, and create a hostile environment. Zoom bombing can lead to lost productivity and potential legal issues.
How to protect your meetings:
- Use unique meeting IDs and strong passwords for each session
- Enable waiting rooms to screen participants before admitting them
- Restrict screen sharing capabilities to hosts only
- Lock meetings once all expected participants have joined
- Avoid sharing meeting links on public platforms or social media
- Use the latest version of your video conferencing software
- Educate your team or students about online meeting etiquette and security, and familiarize yourself with the actions you can take as a host to stop inappropriate behavior in the moment
Not Just Zoom
Remember, while Zoom has given its name to this phenomenon, similar disruptions can occur on any video conferencing platform. Stay vigilant and implement these security measures regardless of the service you use.
By taking these precautions, we can create safer virtual spaces for collaboration, learning, and connection. Let’s work together to keep our online meetings secure and productive!
by Kristen Mcintyre | Jan 16, 2025 | Home Page News, News
Complete Cybersecurity Training to Prevent Interruptions to UCI Single Sign-on Applications
UC Irvine continues to update, strengthen and elevate its information security processes to achieve new standards that all UC’s have committed to upholding. As part of the ZotDefend initiative, we must reach 100% compliance for completion of yearly Cybersecurity Awareness Training for all employees. Due to recent efforts, we are pleased to share that we have increased compliance from 86% to 96%.
Beginning Monday, February 10, 2025, if you are overdue to complete Cybersecurity Awareness Training, you will be restricted from accessing UCI Single Sign-on applications until you have completed the training.
This list includes applications such as:
- UCPath – University of California’s single payroll, benefits, human resources, and academic personnel solution for all UC campuses and medical centers
- Commute Parking – UCI Transportation and parking services
- Timesheets – UCI site for submitting employee timesheets
- Campus Groups – UCI Campus Community site
- FileNet – enterprise content management solution for securely storing UCI Campus and UCI Medical Center content
The following applications will NOT be affected by the restriction:
- UCLC
- Canvas
- ServiceNow
- VPN with SSO enabled
- UCI SSO Temporary Access Extension
- Point and Click (PNC)
Last fall we began to display reminders in your UCI Single Sign-on process when your training is coming due or overdue. Enforcement of this restriction emphasizes the importance of our commitment to ensuring our entire UCI workforce is educated about the most important cybersecurity issues we’re facing as a community.
Emergency Extension
If you require emergency access to a restricted application and are unable to complete the overdue training immediately, you will have the option to enable a one-time extension. This will grant you continued access for 7 days, after which you will be restricted again if the training is not completed.
To complete the training and ensure you are fully compliant, please log in to the UC Learning Center (UCLC) and search: “UC Cyber Security Awareness Fundamentals”
More Information
For more about ZotDefend and to see FAQs, visit the project page. For more information regarding cybersecurity and how you can protect yourself from cyberattacks, visit the Information Security website.
For questions, contact OIT Security at security@uci.edu.
by Kristen Mcintyre | Sep 18, 2024 | News
As UC Irvine increases digital collaboration, protecting our shared electronic information is more critical than ever. Over the next year, UC Irvine will be working diligently to update, strengthen and elevate our security processes to achieve new security standards that all UC campuses have committed to upholding. This initiative, named ZotDefend, will focus on protecting UCI’s digital world.
OIT’s first campus wide initiative under ZotDefend is facilitating the completion of Cybersecurity Awareness Training for all employees. Protecting UCI’s information and resources is vital to the security of our future and a responsibility that each of us share, which is why we must reach 100% compliance across campus.
Additional changes and updates to services affected by this campaign will be communicated in the coming weeks and months.
For more about cybersecurity, and how you can protect yourself from cyberattacks, visit the Information Security website. For questions, contact OIT Security at security@uci.edu.
More Information
by Kristen Mcintyre | Oct 19, 2022 | News
Data Disposal Day
Date: Wednesday, October 26, 2022
Time: 8:00 AM- 12:00 PM
Location: Parking Lot 12A near the Natural Sciences buildings
Southern California Shredding will be on campus to shred both paper and e-waste products on October 26, 2022.
Properly disposing of e-waste is an important component of cybersecurity. Improper disposal, donation, or recycling of e-waste may inadvertently disclose sensitive information, which could be exploited by cyber criminals. Each of us is responsible for the security of information assets with which we work.
Much like e-waste, keeping paper records with sensitive information that no longer need to be maintained under the UC Records Retention Schedule is both a security and privacy risk. Good document hygiene includes shredding unnecessary paper and deleting e-records in a way that is consistent with the UC University Records Management Program (BFB-RMP-1) and the UC Records Retention Schedule.
Acceptable Items for Disposal:
- Paper Records
- staples, paper clips, rubber bands, binder clips and folders with metal prongs don’t need to be removed
- Hard drives
- where possible, please remove hard drives from devices before bringing them to be shredded
- Laptops/Servers
- Computer Monitors
- Small Electronics (Cell phones, Mini tablets, etc..)
- SSDs
- Flash Drives
- CDs/DVDs
- SD Cards
- Lab Equipment
Do Not Bring:
- Backup tapes
- VHS tapes
- Cassette tapes
