Putting Cyber-Criminals on Lockdown
October 25, 2021
October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month — a great time to bring you up to date on recent initiatives we’ve launched at CoolSys to keep your personal information and other data safe.
In September, our cyber-insurance provider mandated that we fully deploy multi-factor authentication (MFA) before October 1. Thanks to the rapid response of our IT team and you, our users, the deployment of MFA was a success. Now we are more secure than ever! Most CoolSys users configured MFA to text a sign-in code to their cell phones. With this extra step in place, it is significantly harder for cyber-criminals to take over your account by getting your login and password.
In addition to MFA, we have a suite of other advanced tools working in the background to keep you and CoolSys safe from cyber-criminals. For example, we implemented a software tool called Abnormal Security over the summer. This tool uses the latest artificial intelligence technology to look for e-mail phishing and other signs that a user’s account might be compromised. This has been a big help in reducing the number and severity of email security incidents.
More Advances Coming Soon
In the future you will see additional changes related to IT security. We will be rolling out the most recent security patches for the Windows operating system, enforcing password expiration every 180 days and requiring automatic screen lockout after 30 minutes of inactivity. These steps are necessary to put us in compliance with our IT security policy and with the best practices in the industry.
While these measures and tools go a long way in helping us to be more secure, the most important protection tools are in your hands. We depend on you to do the right thing! Please stay on the lookout for phishing emails and text message attacks, and remember to report phishing emails using the Phish Alert Report button in your Outlook window.
Thanks for everything you do to help keep us all safe from cyber-criminals!