See Yourself in Cyber

Spooky season means Cybersecurity Awareness Month has returned. This year, experts with the university’s Information Technology team invite everyone to “see yourself in cyber.” The campaign theme reflects the fact that cybersecurity is ultimately about people, which means seeing yourself in cyber no matter your role.

“Cyber security is not just my job; it’s everybody’s job,” said Kip Bates, the university’s associate chief information security officer. “Social engineering is still probably the number one threat. And that’s not about anything technical; it’s about the hackers taking advantage of users.”

Offices and departments across the UC network have organized a month of events to help keep our security awareness up to date. UC Santa Barbara has five events on the calendar, and a full lineup of UC systemwide events is available here. All sessions will be recorded and available at on the systemwide event webpage for those who can’t attend in-person.

Activities kicked off earlier this month with a discussion of authentication by UCSB alumnus Chad Spensky, founder and CEO of Allthenticate, which focuses on identity management and authentication.

Alumna and USC law student Reema Moussa spoke about the current legal landscape of the cybersecurity world and its implications for privacy. Meanwhile, Jon Green will present on third-party cybersecurity risk management Wednesday, Oct. 19. Green serves as chief security officer at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

Although lockdown has lifted, Zoom is still a big part of many of our lives. On Friday, Oct. 21, Giselle Brun, from Zoom’s higher education team, will discuss some of the company’s new security features and best practices to ensure your meetings are safe.

Finally, Spensky will return Wednesday, Oct. 26 to give a talk on human hacking, or social engineering. These cons and tricks enable criminals to infiltrate systems through people, without any technical finesse at all.

“The goal of the UCSB information security team is to spread awareness of the cyber threats that challenge us on a daily basis,” Bates said. “And we want to encourage our colleagues to adopt practices that will protect themselves, their families and the university, since they are the ones on the front line.”