[IS&T Security-FYI] SFYI Newsletter, June 1, 2009

[Monique Yeaton]

In this issue:

1. President Announces Cybersecurity Push
2. Transition to Spam Quarantine at MIT Has Begun
3. IT Partners Spring Conference at Stata, June 3rd


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1. President Announces Cybersecurity Push
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On May 29th, President Obama unveiled an initiative to beef up  
cybersecurity, announcing a new "czar" to oversee the efforts. During  
the announcement, he explained that cyberspace is one of the biggest  
threats to the economy and the military and that the digital  
infrastructure must be safeguarded from a "weapon of mass disruption."

Read the full story here:
<http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/05/president_annou.html 
 >


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2. Transition to Spam Quarantine at MIT Has Begun
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This spring IS&T announced the adoption of a new spam blocking tool in  
our arsenal against this growing threat. Symantec's Spam Quarantine is  
replacing the existing spam screening tool over the summer and IS&T is  
already recommending users to transition over now. This past weekend  
all students except the Class of 2009 have been transitioned with no  
issues. Faculty and staff transitions are in process as well, being  
handled department by department.

Per Deb Bowser, Project Manager for the IS&T Email and Calendaring  
project, the decision to move to Spam Quarantine was based on IS&T's  
commitment to continual improvement of spam management. The concept of  
delivering and storing spam in the production mail system is not  
effective and the spam score thresholds are inadequate.

Ample feedback from the community, an increase in requests for help,  
and early test results from the Microsoft Exchange Pilot made it  
evident that the current spam screening service was less effective,  
especially with the increase in malware and phishing outbreaks. As for  
the performance of the new tool, she says, "We received many accolades  
on the simplification of use, daily email summaries delivered to the  
inbox at 6AM. It conserves valuable mail storage disk space and email  
quota."

It's likely we'll hear more about this transition in the coming weeks.  
For additional information on Spam Quarantine and how it works, please  
see:
<http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/email/nospam/spamquarantine.html>


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3. IT Partners Spring Conference at Stata, June 3rd
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The next IT Partners full day conference will be held on Wednesday,  
June 3, 2009, 9 am - 5 pm. Registration desk is outside of Kirsch  
Auditorium, Stata Center, 32-123. The sessions will take place in  
classrooms located in the Stata Center (Building 32).

The IT Partners full day conference will feature 25 presentations and  
training sessions on a variety of important topics including Microsoft  
Exchange transition, sensitive data protection, the Hermes  
knowledgebase, and Virtual Machines. The IT Security team will be  
presenting 3 of the sessions.

Keynote speaker is MIT's Vice President for Finance, Israel Ruiz and  
Jeff Schiller will be closing the conference with a presentation at 4  
pm. There will also be a vendor fair.

If you plan to attend, please send email to <rsvp-itpartners at mit.edu>  
to confirm your attendance. Further conference information and a  
preliminary schedule is available on Hermes at: <http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/x/MTJB 
 > but is subject to change.

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Find current and older issues of Security FYI Newsletter: <http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/x/ehBB 
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Monique Yeaton
IT Security Awareness Consultant
MIT Information Services & Technology (IS&T)
(617) 253-2715
http://web.mit.edu/ist/security

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