SUBJECT:

New Information Security Measures Announced

A number of major organizations are currently experiencing a major malicious cyberattack (documented at https://goo.gl/DzbNEm) distributed by phishing emails. Google also suffered a significant phishing incident last week (a detailed explanation is available at https://goo.gl/2qgE7d).

Though UC San Diego has not been affected by these attacks, please be extremely cautious before clicking links in any email you receive.

Current efforts to address phishing and spam block approximately 30 million messages per week, which would have cost upwards of 6 full-time faculty salaries in lost time and productivity spent examining, reporting, and deleting incoming phishing emails.

To further improve anti-phishing and anti-spam efforts, UC San Diego Information Security is launching two new services:

* On Monday, May 15, a new anti-phishing service will scan incoming emails for URLs that lead to phishing websites. A score will be assigned to each message based on the examination and will be included in your email’s header. After the first week of this service, messages with a high “phish score” will be tagged, quarantined, or blocked.

* On May 21 changes will also be made to the Blink online staff directory, designed to slow a spammer's ability to collect UC San Diego email addresses. There will be no visible changes when accessing the directory from campus or via VPN, but downloading staff search results from off-campus will require a Single Sign-On login.

Please contact Chief Information Security Officer Michael Corn at mcorn@ucsd.edu with questions or concerns about these measures.

Learn more about phishing (and how to protect yourself) at http://go.ucsd.edu/2rbkWHb

Michael Corn Chief Information Security Officer Information Technology Services Pierre Ouillet Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer