Security Awareness Initiatives by the ITSO

Description

The ITSO has been tasked with providing security awareness training, presentations, and seminars to all members of the Virginia Tech community in an effort to make the campus more secure. Throughout each calendar year the ITSO presents to various departments on numerous topics ranging from, sensitive data protection, general security tips and tricks, phishing and other social engineering attempts, security of social networking sites, etc. Presented below are some of the examples of the departments and numbers we reach each year.

 Education and Awareness across an entire calendar year (sample from 2007-2008 calendar year)

• The IT Security Office was involved in over 100 presentations, training sessions, and informative talks throughout the year, reaching a large number of people.
  • FDI - Approximately 400 faculty
  • HR Training - Approximately 200 staff
  • Academic Classes - Approximately 4000+ students
  • Departmental Presentations - An additional 100+ faculty and staff
  • Other Presentations (off-campus, non-University groups) - Approximately 2,750 additional people
• Participated in all Faculty Development Institute sessions during the spring and summer, and also participated in certain selected groups during the past months.
• Provided technology security awareness to orientation sessions:
  • Assisted orientation leaders in developing appropriate presentation for the new student orientation held during the summer (incoming freshman class).
  • Presented security session at several student orientations; for example, foreign students (twice), new Graduate Teaching Assistants, graduate student orientation fair, College of Engineering freshman orientation.
  • Worked with other areas to present to new faculty during their orientation.
  • Participate as part of classified employee orientation on a weekly basis.
• Maintained and improved the security web site to provide users with easy access to security tools and references for the latest security news.
• Assisted in hosting professional security-related programs on campus for both technical and non-technical personnel; for example, hosted a week-long SANS security class. Spear-headed the SANS-IVC initiative for University training
• Used publications, both locally and on the national level, to promote security issues within higher education.
  • Created and published the IT Security Quarterly Hot Sheet newsletter to keep the University abreast of news related to the IT Security Office
• Participated in programs where visitors were hosted by other Tech departments by sharing our technology security programs.
• Utilized student interns in the IT Security Office to reach out to the student population using technologies commonly used by those users, and developing other methods to reach students: posters, tent cards, etc.
• Created several new initiatives for the Fall 2008 academic year
  • A series of 4 posters for distribution to RAs and staff
  • VT IT Security Mousepads for distribution
  • IT Security video to be used in HR training for new staff

New and Ongoing Education and Awareness Projects/Initiatives 2008 - forward

• Use of the Collegiate Times, both printed and online, to further spread the IT Security Awareness presence (Fall and Spring semester)
• Research for best practices and implementation of video and social networking mediums to distribute security awareness to the VT community
• Further security awareness presence in the academic and administrative areas of Virginia Tech through a greater number of presentations and other offerings