Tech Alerts

Dear Fairleigh Dickinson Community,

As the holiday season approaches, we remind everyone to remain vigilant against potential phishing attempts. Cybercriminals often intensify their efforts during this time, exploiting the festive atmosphere and the busy nature of the season to target individuals.

Phishing attempts can take many forms, including emails and messages that appear legitimate. These fraudulent communications often mimic reputable sources and may request personal information, prompt you to click on malicious links, or download harmful attachments.

Here are a few tips to stay secure:

• Verify the sender: Check the sender’s email address carefully. Official university communications will always come from verified university email accounts.
• Think before you click: Be cautious with links and email attachments, especially if they urge immediate action or offer something that seems too good to be true.
• Protect your information: Avoid providing personal information such as passwords, Social Security numbers, or bank account details via email.
• Use advanced resources: Enable advanced cybersecurity tools, such as two-factor authentication, whenever available.
• Report suspicious emails: If you receive a questionable email, report it using the Outlook reporting function.
  
  For details on reporting phishing messages:

By exercising caution and reporting suspicious activity, we can contribute to a safer digital environment. Your awareness can prevent potential breaches, safeguard your personal information, and help secure the entire FDU community.

Wishing you a safe and joyful holiday season!

As part of our multipronged approach to combating phishing and other online scams, FDU OIRT regularly receives updates from the New Jersey Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Cell (NJCCIC). The NJCCIC is the cybersecurity division of New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.

The NJCCIC has alerted us to an ongoing phishing attempt specifically targeting educational institutions. This scam email includes a Microsoft Word attachment claiming to provide details about a supposed “US Student Service Supplementary Grant” designed to assist students with educational and well-being expenses. The email instructs recipients to click on a link to a Google form to obtain these funds. The form requests sensitive personal and financial information, including school and FAFSA account details, online banking information, date of birth, and Social Security number. If submitted, this information is stolen by the threat actors running the phishing campaign. While Google has since disabled this specific form, similar malicious webpages are likely to appear.

If you receive an email of this nature, know that it is not a legitimate grant opportunity. Refrain from submitting any information. If you have already shared your information, change your password immediately, file a report with identitytheft.gov, and freeze your credit to mitigate potential identity theft attempts.

On September 27th, we sent an alert to the community regarding an issue with certain FDU-issued Lenovo laptop computers. For affected users, the boot process occasionally does not complete successfully, causing the laptop to remain on the Lenovo start-up screen.

After extensive testing, OIRT and our vendors have identified the root cause of the issue. If you experience this issue again, either as a recurrence or for the first time, create a support ticket, and we will apply the fix to permanently resolve it.

Fairleigh Dickinson University recently updated its licensing agreement for the Microsoft 365 suite of applications. In recent days, members of our community have reported seeing a variation of a popup message claiming that FDU’s school license is expiring and will soon be deactivated.

If you encounter this message, you can resolve the issue in a few quick steps:

1. Open Microsoft Word and navigate to “Account” in the lower-left corner

2. On the Account page, select the “Resolve” button

3. This will redirect you to the “Activate Office” page. Sign in using your FDU NetID to complete the activation

This process ensures your Microsoft 365 applications remain active under the new licensing agreement. In the unlikely event that you are still experiencing issues after performing this procedure, please create a ticket on SAMI Support.

Anthology has scheduled maintenance for the Blackboard (SaaS) environment. The FDU Webcampus system will be unavailable starting at 2:00 AM Eastern Time on Thursday, November 28, for approximately six hours. While it is possible the upgrade may finish early, Anthology cannot guarantee this.

This scheduled maintenance is required to keep the Webcampus environment up to date. During the downtime, users attempting to log in to Webcampus will encounter a maintenance notice page.

In the summer of 2018, FDU launched the Red Folder Initiative. The Red Folder is a quick-reference guide to mental health resources for faculty and staff who interact with distressed students.

The Red Folder helps faculty and staff identify common signs of student distress and navigate campus protocols in emergencies. It also provides tips on approaching a student who may be in distress and guidance on connecting them with appropriate resources.

FDU OIRT will push an update to the Red Folder for all FDU-owned faculty and staff Windows and macOS computers on 11/20/24. After the update, the Red Folder icon may change positions on your Windows desktop or move to the dock for macOS users. Most importantly, it will now direct faculty and staff to Reporting Students of Concern guide.

Reporting Students of Concern

If you do not receive the update by 11/22/24 or have questions, visit SAMI Support.

Our endpoint protection solution, Falcon CrowdStrike EDR, has introduced several enhancements, and we would greatly value your participation in testing and providing feedback. We will begin enabling the new features for OIRT testing on November 18th at 9:00 AM, with testing concluding at the end of the day on December 15th.

These updates significantly improve our malicious file and activity detection capabilities while being designed to have minimal impact on users. If you notice any changes in CrowdStrike’s behavior during testing, complete the feedback form as soon as possible.

Feedback Form

Even if you don’t observe any changes, we encourage you to report that as well before the testing period ends. The form may be submitted multiple times throughout the testing phase.

Thank you for supporting this important initiative to ensure a smooth rollout. If you encounter any technical issues during testing, please open a SAMI ticket for assistance.

Enhanced exploitation visibility:

Generates events for the following types of processes:

• Productivity applications, such as Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Reader

• Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer

• Command-line interfaces, such as Command Prompt and PowerShell

Enhanced Machine Learning for larger files:

Expands Machine Learning’s file size coverage.

USB insertion-triggered scan:

Starts an on-demand scan when an end user inserts a USB device. To adjust detection sensitivity, change Anti-Malware Detection levels in On-Demand Scans Machine Learning.

On-write script file visibility:

Provides improved visibility into various script files being written to disk, while obfuscating a portion of their content.

Quarantine on removable media:

Quarantines executable files after they’re prevented by Next-Gen AntiVirus (NGAV).

Microsoft Office file malicious macro removal:

When enabled, malicious macros in Microsoft Office files will be removed before the file is released on the host.

Vulnerable driver protection:

Quarantines and blocks the loading of newly written kernel drivers that CrowdStrike analysts have identified as vulnerable. Available on Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, and later versions.

Extended user-mode data visibility:

Allows the sensor to generate additional data from a user-mode component loaded into eligible processes. Higher settings may incur greater performance penalties in exchange for increased visibility. Testing with critical applications is recommended before full deployment at a new level.

Cloud Anti-Malware for Microsoft Office files:

Identifies potentially malicious macros in Microsoft Office files. If prevention is enabled, the system either quarantines the file or removes the malicious macros before releasing the file back to the host.

Cloud-based anti-malware:

Uses cloud-based machine learning, informed by global executable analysis, to detect and prevent known malware for online hosts.

Cloud-based adware and PUP detection:

Uses cloud-based machine learning, informed by global executable analysis, to detect and prevent adware and potentially unwanted programs (PUP) for online hosts.

Sensor-based anti-malware:

For both offline and online hosts, uses sensor-based machine learning to identify and analyze unknown executables as they run, detecting and preventing malware.

Cloud-based anti-malware for on-demand scanning:

For online hosts running on-demand scans initiated by end users, uses cloud-based machine learning, informed by global executable analysis, to detect and prevent known malware.

Sensor-based anti-malware for on-demand scanning:

For both offline and online hosts running on-demand scans initiated by end users, uses sensor-based machine learning to identify and analyze unknown executables, detecting and preventing malware.

The issue preventing staff and faculty from accessing Single Sign-On (SSO) applications has been mostly resolved. At this time, we recommend restarting your computer to ensure you can reconnect to shared files on the FDU Network.

After restarting, when attempting to access an application through SSO, you may receive the following prompt.

If so, click “Set up”:

Next, click “Enroll”

We are aware that some individuals may still experience denied access. If this happens, please open a SAMI ticket so a member of our Systems team can assist. Please note that any tickets opened prior to 2:00 PM will most likely be closed automatically, as the original systemwide issue has now been resolved.

Once enrollment is complete, no further action is required.

At approximately 4:00 AM this morning, applications such as Microsoft products and Colleague accessed through Single Sign-On became unavailable for a large portion of our staff and faculty.

The issue has been identified, and access is now being restored across all affected applications. We expect to return to full functionality by 2:00 PM this afternoon.

Computer labs busy? Feeling like you want to work in your residence hall room or at home?
We have a solution for that called FDU Anywhere, which allows you to access our computer lab image and all the software provided in our labs from anywhere, at any time.

On 10/30, we will perform an upgrade of the FDU Anywhere service. If you are already an FDU Anywhere user, please make sure to log out of the system between 7:30 AM EDT and 8:30 AM EDT on 10/30 as the changes are implemented.

After the upgrade, students will be able to access FDU Anywhere without needing to connect to the FDU VPN. With the service now easier to use than ever, this is the perfect time to try it out! You can access FDU Anywhere by logging in at anywhere.fdu.edu with your NetID username and password.

FDU Anywhere

For more information, review our Tutorial: