In an attempt to help faculty and staff better identify “spoofing” type Emails, you may have noticed that some of the Email found in your “Junk” folder that is already marked as “SPAM” has been modified to include one or both types of new alerts such as these:
| ATTENTION: This email is from an external source that is NOT AUTHORIZED to send email on behalf of Canisius College. DO NOT TRUST ANY CONTENT IN THIS EMAIL MESSAGE |
| CAUTION: This email was sent from outside of Canisius College. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails. |
Some of the more recent “spoofed” Emails make it appear that someone from Canisius has Emailed you requesting information. While we encourage everyone to monitor activity in their junk/spam Email folders, we have taken additional precautions to help you better discern malicious vs. valid senders. You will only see these alerts in plain text in your junk folder but if you move it to any one of your other mailbox folders, you will see the full color versions of the above alerts.
On January 1, we will be adding the red alert message to Emails in your inbox, from external senders (currently we only add the alert to messages to Emails in your junk/spam folder). We have “white-listed” Emails sent from some of our partner vendors (Slate, Adirondack, Medicat, emails sent by Advancement through Benchmark, etc.) so they will not get this type of header. If you discover we have missed a vendor that should be white-listed, please Email the help desk at helpdesk@canisius.edu.
Our intention is to reduce the number of incidents of compromised login credentials, cell phone numbers and requests for wire transfers or viruses that could impact campus users. There has been an increase in the number of incidents over the last six months so further action is warranted at this time. Other cyber security measures are also being investigated.
Submitted by: Information Technology Services
