Why everyone needs to have some cybersecurity awareness training

It has become a world that everyone needs to have some understanding about being secure when you are dealing with things on the computer or any device that connects to the internet. It can be emails that you receive that look good in some ways but can have issues with them, or text messages you get saying they are from your bank or internet provider.

The world around us has become harder to deal with when it comes to being safe when you are on the internet. For some people, it is the way they grew up because everything they have done has been online, but then there are the generations that grew up with a mix of everything is now online to things weren’t available online when they were growing up.

 It is amazing how many emails you can receive in a day that are offering you some service that you don’t need or would want. There are also those emails that look like they may be valid until you do a little bit of digging, and you see that the email it’s from isn’t from who it says it’s coming from. The other thing is how many times do we receive an email with a click this link to update your personal information, and it looks valid, but it isn’t. These are the types of reasons why everyone should have some sort of cybersecurity training. It is to help you be aware of what is good and what isn’t and how doing a few simple checks before clicking on a link can keep you safe.

Text messages are also another way that someone can get taken advantage up because it looks like it is valid until it’s too late. How many of us have received those messages with either a bank or Netflix letting us know that our account has been blocked, and we need to verify our information. If you get one of these, the best way to verify your information instead of clicking on the link that is provided is to go to either the app for your bank or streaming platform and log in and see if there is an issue. The link you are normally getting through these text messages are to someone else, and they are just asking you for your personal information so that they can take over your account.

 Being aware of what you need to watch out for is important to everyone, no matter how much time you spend on the internet. It only takes one wrong click or one wrong verification of your personal information that can cause you a lot of damage. In the world today, where there are so many more ways that personal information can be compromised, we are the ones that need to ensure that we are not providing it to the wrong people.

 

When the rain takes over

For some of us living in a big city when there is a major rain fall, things can be greatly impacted. For us here in Toronto there is a river that runs right beside a highway and when the river overflows the highway gets flooded.  This has happened quite a few times over the years and there doesn’t seem to be a solution on how to manage this situation.

·         When we get lots of rain the river is one of the main places that the rainwater is sent so that means that when there is lots of rain, around 2–3 inches there is going to be an issue.

·         This river is right beside one of the highways (Don Valley Parkway) and the river shores are a little higher than the highway, so you can guess what happens.

So, the results that happen is that the Don River decided to overflow its banks and where does the water go except onto the two roadways that are right beside this river and that means that both of these roads/highways are flooded so that means that there is a major issue.

It got higher after this

On July 16^th, 2024, there was an issue where we saw a lot of rain and as you can probably guess the Don Valley Parkway overflowed and both directions of the highway were closed and there were vehicles stuck because they were caught in all the water. This issue also affected the road on the other side of the river which is Bayview Avenue and that was also closed because of flooding so yes lots of issues that needed to be handled.

This storm that I am talking about impacted a lot of things and with all the rain we got there were also a lot of power outages within Toronto and Toronto Fire had received more than 75% more calls than normal through the day today so that was also something that had to be dealt with. Toronto Fire and Hydro requested that if it wasn’t an emergency to place stop trying to report everything and leave the lines available for emergency issues.

Our transit system (TTC) as also impacted given all the rain and power outages. Some of the vehicles were being diverted and other parts of the transit system just needed to be changed. For our subway system we cannot divert trains, but they can change the starting and stopping of the routes and that is what they did. The system tried their back to maintain service the best that they could and given the amount of rain that we got I am happy with how things were managed.

The flooding of the Don River was only one of the issues that the city had to deal with because there were a lot of other roads that were flooded, which meant people being stranded in their vehicles or the transit system having to divert around the issues. It was a day that a lot of people probably would have wished that they stayed at home today instead of going out and trying to get into the office.

For us, we normally work at home which is good, especially when it rains like it did today. However, when a client has an issue, and you are the closest one to one of their offices, you have to start figuring out how you are going to get to that location. Given all the power outages and flooding it the area of the client site it would have meant a bit of a walk, but thankfully things were resolved remotely, and it meant no trip was required.

So, the water decided to take over the city on the 16^th of July, and it did impact a lot of people, but the water is slowly starting to subside and drain and that means that things should get back to normal before too long or at least we hope that it does. It is now late on the 16^th, and I am checking what has been happening, and I think a lot of the city is getting back to normal and hopefully tomorrow morning everything will be working just fine.

 

Why Blind Copying Recipients in Emails is a Good Idea

Recently I received an invitation to a Zoom meeting/interview, and it was for a volunteer board position which I had applied for. It made me feel good, knowing that I had at least got a chance for the interview. Well things then started to go a little off when I noticed things about the invite that started to raise some flags for me given, I am also involved in IT security.

Here are the issues that I found with the invite:

1. This interview was going to be done via Zoom, which didn’t bother me at all. What did bother me was there were three applicants for this position, so there was one zoom invite and each person had 15 minutes for their interview before the next person was to sign-in.
1. It would have been a better idea that each interview was done via a separate zoom invite so that the applicants didn’t know who else was going for the position.
2. 15 minutes is not a lot of time to answer questions about a position, given there was no job description ever provided. Sure, a Treasurer position you can figure out the basics of the position but is there a term, and of course a lot of the other things. What is really required of the Treasurer?
3. What is stopping the rest of the individuals that are being interviewed to sign on early just so they can watch the other person getting interviewed.
2. The invite to the Zoom meeting was sent to everyone and the applicants were not blind copied but included in the main address, which now shows each person who else has put their hand up for this position.
1. If you are doing something like this, it would be best to blind copy each of the applicants so that they don’t know the email addresses of the other applicants. It also is best when you are sending an email to a group of people that don’t know each other, besides they are all members of one group. This is also an HR level confidentiality issue of providing email addresses to a group of individuals that don’t know each other.

So, the basic courtesy when you are sending an email to a bunch of people that do not know each other is to blind copy them instead of putting each of their email addresses in the to area. Also, if you are going to be interviewing different people, I would really recommend that there be three different invites sent out to three different Zoom meetings. It might mean a bit more work for the individuals doing the interviewing, but at least then each person has their own meeting and not part of another person’s interview.

Blind copying people in emails is always a good idea when you don’t want each person to know who else has been included, and it is also a good security measure so that email addresses cannot be shared with others or possibly compromised if another person’s email account is compromised. So, next time you are wanting to talk to a group of people that probably don’t know each other, I would blind copy everyone to ensure that privacy and security is part of the communication.

 

Continual Learning, why it's important

For a lot of us when we left college or university, there was the sense of, I have finished all the learning that I need to do for my career. I think what needs to be communicated in colleges and universities is that your learning doesn’t stop when you get your diploma or degree. That what you learned there is just a basis of what you will still need to learn throughout your career.

There are so many jobs now that require a certification of some sort and a lot of them come with a need to earn several personal development units (PDU) and it varies depending on what your certification is. What this means is once you have achieved your certification you will need to continue to learn to keep your certification up to date. I know that I have one certification that I need to complete 20 PDU’s a year to maintain certification. There is another certification that I have, and it required 15 PDU’s over a three-year period.

The certification that you have will tell you the minimum number of PDU’s you are required to achieve and some of them have specific requirements such as so many educational versus personal development (community work). When you have more than one certification, it means that you are going to be doing a lot of learning each year.

For those without certifications, there is still a lot of education/learning that happens if you want to move forward in your career. There are so many ways that you can continue to learn during your career and that is taking courses, attending conferences and attending/viewing webinars. All of these are ways that you will continue to learn throughout your entire career. It doesn’t matter what field you are in, there are doing to be times that you will need to do some more learning.

So, when you are talking to anyone, and they say to do that once they finish college or university, they are finished learning you can tell them it’s just part of their education. How many people go back to university or college after they have been working for a while to improve their education.  Another way that we all learn every day is just watching the people around us and experiencing what life has in store for us.

Yes, we are all continually learning, even when we don’t think we are. It’s important to accept that learning is a lifelong journey and not just think that once you have finished formal education that you are done. We all are learning each day, no matter what you think, so enjoy learning and know that it’s going to continue for the rest of your life.