Intelligent CIO North America Issue 25 | Page 15

NEWS

Proofpoint reveals top universities at risk from cybercriminals followed by the UK , then Australia . These findings are based on Domain-based Message Authentication , Reporting and Conformance ( DMARC ) analysis of the top 10 universities in each country . DMARC is an email validation protocol designed to protect domain names from being misused by cybercriminals .

Proofpoint has released new research which found that the top universities in Australia , the US and the UK are lagging behind on basic cybersecurity measures .

The report states this is subjecting students , staff and stakeholders to higher risks of email-based impersonation attacks .
Proofpoint ’ s research found that 97 % of the top 10 universities across each country are not taking appropriate measures to proactively block attackers from spoofing their email domains , increasing the risk of email fraud .
Universities in the US are most at risk with the poorest levels of protection ,
It authenticates the sender ’ s identity before allowing a message to reach its intended destination . DMARC has three levels of protection – monitor , quarantine and reject , with reject being the most secure for preventing suspicious emails from reaching the inbox .
“ Email authentication protocols like DMARC are the best way to shore up email fraud defenses and protect students , staff and alumni from malicious attacks ,” said Steve Moros , Senior Director , Advanced Technology Group , Asia Pacific and Japan at Proofpoint .

Lumen will provide CBP with mission-critical communications support

US Customs and Border Protection ( CBP ) has selected Lumen

Technologies to provide mission-critical communications , Internet connectivity and network services that support the law enforcement agency ’ s systems and facilities across the nation and abroad .
Lumen will provide CBP with a mix of secure , resilient communications services that enable the agency to carry out its essential mission at ports of entry , airports , borders and other facilities in the US and around the world .
The company is serving as a trusted provider of modern network services to the hundreds of CBP locations that support thousands of CBP workers across the globe via Lumen ’ s edge compute platform .
Lumen will support CBP ’ s mission readiness by enhancing the design , engineering , provisioning , management , transition , maintenance and evolution of the agency ’ s communications services .
The company will also help CBP with IT modernization efforts by working with the agency to adopt a Software-Defined Wide Area Network ( SD-WAN ) solution .
“ CBP ’ s 24 / 7 mission to protect the American people , safeguard borders and enhance the nation ’ s economic prosperity means they need a proven network provider that can deliver fast , secure and steadfast connectivity ,” said Zain Ahmed , Senior Vice President , Lumen public sector .
“ CBP put its trust in Lumen to enable next-gen applications and datadriven operations in a world where the reliability and availability of the agency ’ s network and IT infrastructure must be always on .”
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