The holiday season brings joy, celebration, and—unfortunately—an annual spike in online scams. With shopping, travel, and donation requests at their peak, cybercriminals ramp up their efforts to trick busy students, faculty, and staff with too-good-to-be-true deals, fake charity solicitations, and realistic phishing emails. Continue reading #SecureTheSeason: Don’t Let Scammers Steal Your Holiday Spirit
For several weeks, Microsoft Authenticator has been available as an alternative to Duo Security for Multifactor authentication (MFA) on campus. As people get used to innovations like passwordless sign-in and the ability to back up their passkeys, a few discussions have been had amongst the implementation team during the rollout. We spoke with a few members of the Microsoft Authenticator Adoption Project team about their experiences. Continue reading Let’s talk about Microsoft Authenticator
As we come upon that time of year when more people will be traveling, it is also a good time to remind you that cybercriminals will be taking advantage of the opportunity to try to gain access to your data. To help protect yourself when traveling or using public or unsecured Wi-Fi, such as in a coffee shop or an airport waiting area, we recommend using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) to limit the data exposed. Continue reading Connecting Securely with VPN
Parents,
Starting in the Spring 2026 term, SMU will be enforcing Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for Student Authorized Access accounts. We encourage you to be ahead of the curve and register for our MFA using Microsoft Authenticator now to enable this feature to safely and securely verify your SMU online identity. You can complete the sign-up process using your existing credentials, your Net ID and password, which you use to log in today. Continue reading Parents: Multi-Factor Authentication Coming Soon for my.SMU
AI tools like Copilot and ChatGPT can be powerful — but remember, they’re not built to keep your secrets. Once you paste information into an AI, you can’t always control where it goes.. Continue reading Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Outsmart the Haunted AI 👻
