Rock Beats
Keeping our computer network safe: what you should know
The IT Department is continually improving the security of our network, computer systems, and data at the City of Round Rock. Here’s some important information about upcoming security changes that are designed to reduce confusion for employees, improve our ability to make good decisions, and put our organization in a better position to keep our systems, network and data secure:
IT staff will no longer request your user login credentials — do not give your username and password out via email, phone call, or even on a support ticket.
In the past, you may have been asked by IT staff to provide your login credentials, such as a username and password, to help you install/configure software or troubleshoot issues.
IT will no longer request user credentials.
This is an important change that should help reduce the opportunity for City staff to get tricked into providing credentials. Malicious sources will often attempt to trick users into providing credentials through email, or even by phone. With this change, you can be confident that if you are receiving a request for your computer username and password from an email or phone call, this is not a legitimate request from IT and you under no circumstance should provide this information.
IT constantly looks for ways for users to be able to use their computer login for other software systems through single/same sign-on, so the protection of your login credentials are incredibly important.
An article is now available on support.roundrocktexas.gov to provide education on how to avoid falling victim to spam emails.
We have made several adjustments to email delivery to help curtail spoofing of email addresses and the delivery of spam. We still all receive emails that do not have good intentions and are faced with making decisions of legitimacy. We’ve written an article on the support site here with tips on identifying these sources of bogus email.
Multi-factor authentication is on the way to confirm your identity for Office 365 and other platforms.
The IT department is currently working to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) at City of Round Rock to improve security to Office 365 services and other platforms that utilize your computer login credentials.
Multi-factor authentication is a method of confirming users’ claimed identities by using a combination of two or more of these three factors:
- Something you know (such as a password)
- Something you have (such as your mobile device)
- Something you are (such as a biometric thumbprint)
For example, it combines your user name and password that you normally use to sign in (something you know) with at least one other method of verifying authenticity. The most common method is sending a confirmation code via text or running an app to verify authentication through your mobile device (something you have). This additional layer of security is easy to setup and doesn’t take much longer to authenticate, but has been proven to be highly effective at improving security.
Here at City of Round Rock, Office 365 services such as Email, OneDrive, Teams, and the Office Online apps will be secured using this new method in the future. This way, if someone were to get ahold of your account credentials somehow, they would still need your mobile device to approve the login.
The IT Department will be rolling out Multi-Factor Authentication over the next few months. As departments are enabled, IT will provide instructions and knowledge base articles on how to utilize this new security feature.
Free endpoint protection software is now available for City of Round Rock employees’ personal computers.
Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) is an industry leading endpoint protection software that the City of Round Rock utilizes to protect staff computers. The IT Department now offers a free copy of Symantec Endpoint Protection for employees’ personal computers. We encourage all current City of Round Rock employees to take advantage of this benefit and practice safe and secure computing whether at work or at their home. To take advantage of this offer, please visit our support center article to download a copy.