Early Bird

Cybersecurity training available for all MSU Denver employees

Learn about your role in supporting students and keeping the University cybersafe.

By Diane Watkins

October 29, 2020

Metropolitan State University of Denver takes cybersecurity seriously and wants to ensure that all employees know how to keep our University safe. To achieve this goal, the University provides a training course – Check Point: Data Security and Privacy – that covers the most important aspects of cybersecurity. All employees are required to complete the course as part of their onboarding process and as a refresher each year thereafter. This training will need to be taken again by all employees sometime next month as their yearly requirement.

The course provides important information about data security and focuses on employee behaviors, including human biases and tendencies that make employees and data vulnerable. The course is intended to help every employee learn more about these issues, as every employee plays an important role in supporting students by keeping our University safe.

Course topics include:

• Phishing scams and how to spot them
• The top 10 riskiest employee behaviors
• What makes us vulnerable
• The scope of the data-breach problem
• What we need to protect
• Common tactics of scammers
• Protecting data
• Safeguarding your devices
• Working safely in the world
• Creating strong passwords
• Encrypting your devices
• Safeguarding workstations and records
• Properly disposing of documents and data
• Handling requests for private information
• Reporting data breaches

Many of these topics were highlighted in a series of Early Bird articles from Information Technology Services that were published throughout October in support of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. If you enjoyed this series, please keep an eye out for “Technically Speaking” articles, ITS’ regular Early Bird series that provides important, timely information about technology at MSU Denver.

Remember that ITS is always here to help. Feel free to reach out to us with your questions about cybersecurity or any other technology-related topics by contacting the ITS Service Desk at 303-352-7548, submitting a ticket through support.msudenver.edu or emailing support@msudenver.edu from your MSU Denver email account.

And if you have an extra minute, check out “Back It Up” – a parody of “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift – for a motivational, entertaining message about cybersecurity.