Securing BYOD
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) allows staff and students to use their own personal devices to access email, data and other UNSW’s network resources. The term “device” refers to any mobile electronic technology such as smart phones, tablets and laptops. So it is important that all users that connect to the University network resources take the necessary steps to keep their own device secure and free of virus, worms and other forms of malware. Here are some of the steps you could do to help better secure your own personal devices.
Update Your Software:
There are many code defects found in operating systems (such as iOS, Windows, Android) and apps that make them vulnerable to malicious viruses and attacks. Software vendors often release patches to fix code defects to prevent those loopholes being exploited. It is highly recommended that you keep your operating system and application software up to date. This usually can be done manually or it can be set to update automatically. Consult your software vendor’s website for more information regarding software update.
Security Software:
You should ensure your computer has security software installed to help protect your computer from viruses, spyware and hackers. These products may come in individual package or in a bundle that contains anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware and firewall. The University’s license allows for Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) that can be used by University staff and students.
Click here to download your free anti-virus bundle for Windows or Mac operating system. Please install and set it to update automatically then schedule it to scan on a regularly basis too.
Lock Screen:
Portable devices such as laptops, smart phones and tablets are important tools for working and studying at UNSW. Since it contains important files including emails and other sensitive information, you should lock your portable device’s screen at all times when not in use.
Create a screen saver password on your laptop to automatically lock after 15 minutes or inactivity.
Set a passcode, PIN code or biometric and enable automatic lock on your mobile devices
Password Security:
Passwords and PINS are there to help protect important information against unauthorised access. It is often difficult to remember all the passwords for different websites and logins, especially when we’re asked to include capital letters, symbols and numbers in our passwords. Weak passwords such as 1234556, qwerty, iloveyou, aaaaaa, abc123, etc. are easy for a criminal to guess by utilising automated software that can guess thousands of passwords per minute.
The length of your password is also the most important aspect of a strong password. This password ilovemycattigger is much more secure than this password: Ju$tM25. The best way to make passwords easy to remember and secure is to take a sentence and change some of the characters.
For example:
I love my cat Tigger can be modified to: I.l@ve.my.cat.Tigg3r.2015
I like Australian meat pie can be modified to: Ilike0zziem3atp!e
I enjoy my Holiday can be modified to: Ienj0ymyH@l!day
Things to remember:
- Don't use the same password or PIN for everything.
- Change your password regularly, at least every three to twelve months
- Never share your password or PIN with anyone
- Do not give your password in response to call or email irrespective of how legitimate it might seem.
- Password length should be greater than 10 characters long with a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and alphanumeric characters.
- Try not to write your password down. But if you must do it, store it in a safe place.
- Avoid having the same password as a previous password
- Password should be easy for you to remember and hard for others to guess
Backup your data:
Why should you backup your data?
Data is the most valuable aspect of your computer. The operating system and applications can be reinstalled, but it is difficult to recreate your original data. You should backup your personal or work data on a regular basis especially if you are using a personal machine or a non-UNSW Standard Operating Environment (SOE) machine.
Data could be lost due to:
- Hard drives failure
- Natural disasters
- Software bugs including viruses, malware infection (i.e Cryptolocker Ransomeware attack)
- Human actions: deleting an important file by accident, theft and lost
You should have a plan for recovering should one of the above-mentioned issues happen to your data. Backup shouldn’t be a complicated task since there are many products that will help automate this process for you.
How to backup your data?
There are a few ways to backup your data and store them in a safe place. These could be backing it up to the network drive, backing it up to a storage device, or using an online backup service.
Backing up to the network drive:
We recommend that both staff and students store UNSW work-related files to their own assigned UNSW network home drive.
- How to access staff file storage
- How to access student file storage
Backing up to a storage device:
There are a variety of storage devices, such as CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, USB or external hard drive. For some data that is not often used, we recommend that you archive it by burning it to a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray. This will help save space for new data.
Small USB drives or thumb drives are only recommended for storing data temporarily and are often used to transfer files for presentations. These drives have high failure rates and are therefore not recommended for long-term storage. Also because of its small size, they’re easy to misplace.
Larger external hard drives are a recommended option for your daily backup. And you should have multiple copies of backup on different external drives should one drive fail. Below are instructions that generally work with a larger external hard drive that does a full system or data backup depending on how you configure it.
Time Machine is a built-in backup feature of Mac OS X. You will need to purchase an external hard drive and connect it to your Mac.
Mac: Time machine
Backup and Restore tool is a built-in feature for Windows 7 that can be setup to do a scheduled backup to an external hard drive.
Windows: Backup and Restore tool
File History is a backup tool in Windows 8 that functions just like Apple’s Time machine. Once it is configured, Windows will regularly backup the file automatically in the background.
Windows: File History tool
Backing up to an online cloud service:
There are many vendors who provide online cloud service. We recommend that you only store UNSW work related files on UNSW file Servers.
- CrashPlan
- DropBox
- Microsoft One Drive
- Google Drive
- OwnCloud - Storage option for Researchers
Tips for backups:
We recommend that you keep a backup strategy in place, such as:
- Backup data on multiple devices and store in a secure place
- Verify your backups to ensure it can be restored
- Encrypt backups that contain sensitive data
- Identify what you need to backup and how often you want to back it up
IT Security
Need help?
If you have further questions, have a look at Self Help or the IT Service Centre website.
Alternatively, you can contact the IT Service Centre on 9385 1333.
CRICOS Provider Code: 00098G
ABN: 57 195 873 179
UNSW Sydney NSW 2052 Australia
Telephone (+61 02) 9385 1333
Authorised by IT & AV Manager, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW Australia
Page last updated: Friday 19 June 2015