A timely warning from the University Information Service:
Various high profile data security exploits have made the news recently. Please apply all available software updates and patches (for the operating system and all installed apps) to your devices: desktop computers, laptops, tablets and other mobile devices can all be vulnerable and should all be updated regularly to help protect you against attacks. Please also update any isolated computers that have been running for some time (e.g. running a service or busy doing a data analysis); these may not be regularly reviewed and, as a consequence are usually very vulnerable.
Further advice on how to Stay Safe Online is available.
Within Chemistry we offer some things that can help with this. Managed workstations are automatically kept up to date by the IT staff.
You can see your machine’s last security scan results in our system monitor. Look for the ‘probes’ report.
Old equipment that is running operating systems such as Windows XP where there is no longer any security support can be automatically placed on a restricted network segment. Here it can get any security updates that are available, and can exchange data with local fileservers, but is otherwise protected from access from the network.
The University Information Service offers free anti-virus software for all members of the University.