Practicing Safe Computing
One form of attack that is growing rapidly is the use of social engineering to infect your computer, or to gather sensitive information from you. These attacks can take the form of professional built, legitimate looking fake websites that prompt you to input sensitive data or even emails from people posing as your IT support that ask for your password. To avoid being taken advantage of by these attacks, be sure not to give personal information to any websites with which you are unfamiliar. Also never give out your password, under any circumstances. We will never send you email asking for your password. If you receive such an email, it is not legitimate.
Password Security
Passwords must be complex and should never be shared. Passwords, especially your Harvard Key must never be written down and must not be stored anywhere on or near your system. If a password is written down it must be stored securely.
If you have trouble remembering your password, there are a few options available for password storage. The University recommends LastPass and makes it available for free. Details can be found at lastpass.com/harvard. For Mac users, secure notes may be helpful. More information available from Apple.
For any questions about safe computing, please contact us.