In the event of an emergency, we want to ensure that every member of the Simmons community gets the message. To help communicate information as quickly and effectively as possible, Simmons Technology is working in tandem with Public Safety to expand our emergency alert system.

In the near future, the alerts that are sent to your email and phone—via automated voice message and text—will also appear on digital signage on the Academic and Residence Campuses, and as desktop alerts on Simmons-owned computers.

Behind the scenes, Public Safety will make use of one-click alerts that will be sent to the entire community. This means that with the click of a button, Public Safety can send nearly instantaneous alerts of an on-campus emergency via phone, email, computer desktop messages, and digital signage.

Because emergency notifications are only effective if they reach you, we encourage everyone to verify and update your emergency contact information on file with the College. Students should update their info in Simmons Connection (step-by-step instructions) while faculty and staff should use Workday (step-by-step instructions).

This session will look at the best practices for engaging students in meaningful discussion. This will include tips for handling discussions in multiple venues: in a face-to-face classroom, an asynchronous online discussion board and in the synchronous or virtual classroom.

Topics covered will include: establishing community, writing good questions, defining expectations, handling disruptive students and balancing workload. This will be an interactive workshop where you will leave with tools for creating your own engaging classroom activities. Bring your own experience and ideas so everyone can get talking!

This session is open to ALL faculty—whether you teach online or on-campus. Visit the Faculty Fellows Hub to get complete details on all the sessions being offered.

Interested in signing up for this session? RSVP today!

Creating and keeping track of your passwords is no easy task. They need to meet a lengthy set of criteria in order to be secure. They should be at least eight characters long, and include a capital letter, and a number, and a symbol. And they shouldn’t include any personal information, like your name or birthdate, or any common password elements. Oh, and as a reminder, you shouldn’t reuse passwords for multiple services.

So, once you’ve got all that covered, the hardest part might be remembering your passwords for each online service you use. To help solve this problem, Simmons Technology provides password management software called KeePass, an open-source password manager that helps you to create and store a database of your passwords and only allows access using a single master password.

KeePass is installed on all Simmons-owned Windows and Mac computers. To install KeePass on your personal computer, you can download it at KeePass.info (for Windows) or KeePassX.org (for Mac).

If you decide to use KeePass or another password management tool, please be mindful of phishing attempts via email and never give your master password to anyone. As a reminder, Simmons Technology will never ask you for your password and we’ll never send you a link with a request to change your password.

Do you own an internet-connected device other than your phone and computer? Most of us do, whether it’s a smartwatch, fitness tracker, baby monitor, or even your car. In fact, researchers predict there will be more than 20 billion internet-connected devices in use by 2020.

These connected devices make our lives easier and can provide peace of mind. Knowing that you did in fact turn off the oven or that your cat is doing just fine while you’re on vacation is nice. But what if someone else was able to view and record video of your home or steal personal data from your Fitbit?

These are the dangers of new technology being a step or two ahead of information security. We get frequent reminders to change passwords and keep antivirus software up-to-date, but we don’t hear much about securing other types of devices. These products, which collectively are referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), are vulnerable to the same attacks that threaten our computers and mobile devices.

Last October, there was a widespread outage of major websites, including Netflix, Twitter, and Spotify. The outage lasted for hours and was the result of a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS). These types of attacks involve sending a flood of traffic to a website in order to overwhelm its resources. Often, this traffic is generated by using large numbers of computers infected with malware to help attack a website. DDoS attacks have long been a popular tool among cyber criminals, but this one had a relatively new wrinkle—many of the devices involved were security cameras and other internet-connected devices.

Ensuring the security of internet-connected devices is a major concern. While your DVR probably wasn’t involved in this recent attack, that doesn’t mean that it—and other devices in your home—aren’t vulnerable to attacks. Large-scale efforts are underway in both the government and private sectors to improve security for IoT devices and getting it right is critically important as threats continue to evolve.

While this work is ongoing, there are several steps you can take right now to secure your devices:

• The easiest is to ensure that your home network is secure by creating a strong WiFi password and enabling your router’s firewall. Check with your internet service provider for how-to guides to getting this done.
• Another important step is to keep your devices and home network equipment up-to-date. Periodically check for updates to your devices and don’t ignore alerts or notifications from device manufacturers requesting that you run an update.
• Lastly, decide what devices actually need to be connected to the internet. Consider the advantages of connecting and assess whether it’s worth the risk. You probably want to be able to check your home security system from your phone, but it’s very likely that a toaster oven can do its job without being online.