Here is an opportunity for all staff members to purchase devices for personal use. Please note that this is being offered for personal use and not for use in the school buildings. We don’t directly support any of these, we are just making the information available to you. Some of the deals are pretty dog gone good.

Personal Purchase Program

Why should you care? Security isn’t a “fun” topic. It is important though.

Recently, over 270 million email accounts were compromised. These accounts include Mail.ru, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Essentially, all of the email credentials were stolen.

Why should you care?

Hackers know users cling to favourite passwords, resisting admonitions to change credentials regularly and make them more complex. It’s why attackers reuse old passwords found on one account to try to break into other accounts of the same user.

These credentials can thus be used to access lots of other sites. This can lead to bank fraud, the creation of accounts, and more.

Protection comes in the form of not using the same passwords on multiple sites. So how can you remember thousands of passwords? One easy way is to use a password manager.

By the way, there are a couple of practices which can truly cause problems:

• allowing your browser to “remember” your passwords
• writing down your password on a post it note (yea, “hiding” it under your keyboard isn’t really a good idea)
• telling anyone your password
• changing your password by increasing the number at the end by 1

Passwords aren’t fun. Security can be a hassle. However, it is much less fun and a much bigger hassle if your credentials are stolen.

RESA has scheduled maintenance on their network coming up this Sunday.

Potential service outages can last from 8AM to 4PM. School districts are asked to avoid scheduling activities on that date that require Internet connectivity.

Phishing is a very real problem. Phishing is an attempt to get an email user to either install malware (software that can take over your computer), or to gather information that can be used for nefarious reasons. This can include having a user enter information into a form or email that then gives the bad guys that information. This could be signing into a bank account and transferring money (your money) to themselves (no longer your money at that point). It can be to collect user names so that they can install software that will encrypt your computer (then they charge you to decrypt it).

Here is a quick guide that we’ve developed to provided some tips to protect yourself.

Phishing Flyer

Phishing is nothing new. Recently, we’ve had a successful phishing attack.

I posted some tips from Eastern Michigan University back in 2012 which are still relevant.

Phishing

Once an attacker is successful, it becomes easier because the attacker can use that account to send to others. Now the email will appear to come from someone you know. However, the same concerns are still present.

A few definitions to help:

• Phishing – this is an email sent out in the hopes of getting the user to “give up” log in information. Frequently, this will include as much “known” or popular information as possible.
• Spear phishing – like above but targeted at specific individuals. This is by far the most successful type of attack. These frequently include information that is accurate to the individual.
• Clone phishing – an attack that uses a legitimate email as the basis. The link or attachment is changed and then sent out again.
• Whaling – phishing attacks that are targeted at high level officials.

Some reminders (if you didn’t read above), of what you can do to help protect yourself:

• NEVER enter your user name and password into a Google Form
• Always look at the actual email address the email comes from
• Hover over a link, without clicking on it, to see what the URL is (hint: https://www.imrippingyouoff.com) is probably not a link that you want to follow.

As many teachers and others are aware, we take copyright seriously. More and more teachers are using video resources in class. Many teachers have a personal Netflix account. The issue is in using that personal account in the classroom. Using Netflix in this way appears to be in violation of their Terms of Use.

The Netflix service, and any content viewed through our service, are for your personal and non-commercial use only. During your Netflix membership, we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, license to access the Netflix service and view movies and TV shows through the service on a streaming-only basis for that purpose. Except for the foregoing limited license, no right, title or interest shall be transferred to you. You agree not to use the service for public performances.

Please note a couple of important distinctions. When you sign up for a Netflix account (or Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus,etc.), you are agreeing to their terms and conditions. Generally, those conditions include that you will only use it for personal use. The classroom is not personal use. The classroom is a public performance.

There are some basic guidelines that you can follow:

• If you pay for an account, it probably can’t be used in school.
• If you need a user name and password to access, it probably can’t be used in school.

We recognize the value of video. We have opened up YouTube to staff and students. Media Specialists can approve videos for students to view if need be. This allow us to follow appropriate Copyright law and provide appropriate video resources for learning. Certainly it is not perfect yet. We do hope that it will continue to get better and better.