Campus Technology Services

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM)

This year, SUNY Oswego has specific initiatives to help protect your SUNY Oswego account including 16-character passwords and a phishing identification contest.

New 16-character passwords

Passwords with at least 16 characters and a mix of alphanumeric and special characters have become best practice as they are harder to hack. Campus Technology Services (CTS) will require 16-character passwords starting today, Oct. 1.

To get started, visit the CTS account management page. Please make your new SUNY Oswego password different from any other password you use online. Have your password changed by the end of the month, Oct. 31.

Phishing awareness

Starting today, Oct. 1, CTS wants to hear from you on the phishing scams you receive in your inbox.

Google does a great job filtering out many phishing emails, but some do end up coming through. Use one or more of the following ways to participate and you’ll be entered into a contest for one of three $25 College Store gift cards.

Ways to enter the contest:

• Forward a phishing email received in your SUNY Oswego inbox (not the spam folder) to [email protected].
• Take our phishing quiz and see how good you are at identifying harder than usual phishing scams. Send your results to [email protected].
• Take an 8 minute LinkedIn Learning course on Identifying Phishing Attacks and learn how to stay safe online. Let CTS know you completed the course by sending an email to [email protected] with the subject line "Phishing Course Completed".

Starting on Friday, Sept. 13 in the evening, a phishing scam started circulating posing as “SUNY Oswego IT Administration” coming from various SUNY Oswego email addresses.

The following are the characteristics of the email:

• It has a subject containing: “Urgent: Verify Your School Portal Login Credentials”
• The greeting starts off as “Dear Student”
• The first paragraph of the message starts with: “SUNY Oswego Admin has detected irregular activity with your School portal login credentials, particularly with the Office 365 system.”
• The second paragraph asks to verify your account by clicking on a link to a Google Doc.
• The message is signed by “SUNY Oswego IT Administration”

In addition to email, text messages with similar content are being sent.

• The content of the text messages mention suspension of your account if you don’t reply in 24 hours.
• It is also signed by “SUNY Oswego Admin.”
• It may also ask you to open up Gmail and type in a number, which is the number needed for multi-factor authentication (MFA).

If you received one of these emails or text messages, it is safe to delete it and report it as a phish within Gmail. If you clicked on any links, submitted information into the linked Google Doc, received/replied to the text message to enter a code and/or entered the code, immediately change your password.

If you replied to the email or text message and are suddenly signed out/can't get back into your account, contact Campus Technology Services (CTS) immediately.

In general, emails asking you to provide and/or verify your login credentials, especially “urgent” ones, are a sign of a phishing scam. Unsolicited job offers and the purchase of gift cards are also generally phishing scams.  

If you are ever in doubt of whether an email is legitimate, please contact CTS.

Any further information related to this phishing scam, will be posted on the CTS status page.

To expand access and support student success, Penfield Library now offers longer loan periods for laptops for students. Week-long loans of laptops and Macbooks as well as three-hour loans (in-library use only) for Chromebooks are now available to all students.

A limited number of laptops and Macbooks are available to students for a semester-length loan period. Due to the limited number available, semester-length loans require approval from the Office of the Dean of Students. To take advantage of these laptops, students should contact the Office of the Dean of Students directly to say they are interested in a semester-length loan laptop from Penfield. Once approved, students can pick up their laptop or Macbook at Penfield Library.

Students will be prioritized in this program. In lower student demand times, faculty and staff may be able to borrow the equipment if there is available equipment. Contact Penfield Library Check-Out desk.

When picking up a laptop from Penfield, please allow five to 10 minutes to check the item out, to allow Penfield staff to prepare the laptop for your use.

A change in SUNY Oswego’s Google domain related to storage for the Gmail, Drive, and Photos apps will take place in early 2025.

Google has revised their unlimited storage offering and is allocating specific amounts of space to higher education institutions to be enforced in November 2024. SUNY Oswego has an allocated 238 terabytes (TB) for our domain.

Google changed its offering to promote a fair distribution of storage resources across institutions. Likewise, while SUNY Oswego’s current domain usage is under our allocated amount (193 TB), we need to plan for future growth and ensure space is used equitably.

Therefore, effective Feb. 17, 2025, each user will have a storage limit (quota) as outlined below.

• Faculty and Staff: 50 GB
• Students: 15 GB
• Department accounts: 5 GB
• Clubs and Organization accounts: 1 GB
• Alumni and Retirees: 15 GB applied to Gmail only (Drive and Photo storage will no longer be available)

In addition, a separate 25 GB quota will be applied to shared drives listed under “Shared Drives” in the Google Drive left navigation.

To prepare for the change, please review the “Instructions” section of “Managing Your Google Storage Quota” prior to February 17.