Urgent: Duke OIT Security Notice

Duke Faculty, Staff and Students,

On Oct. 28, 2020, Duke received an alert of an imminent and credible cybercrime threat involving ransomware targeting U.S. healthcare organizations. While there are no indications yet that Duke has been directly impacted, the joint Duke IT Security Offices are enacting timely and reasonable precautions that include heightened monitoring for potential security issues. We are asking everyone in our community to remain vigilant and to take steps to protect Duke and our patients:

• Do not open emails, click on links, or open attachments from unknown or suspicious senders.
• Report all suspicious emails to the IT Security Office by clicking on the “Report Phish to Duke” button or emailing security@duke.edu.
• Do not access non-work email accounts (personal email) while using a Duke-owned computer or connected to the VPN.
• Check with your IT support to ensure that your computers are fully patched, including your web browsers.
• Ensure that you are applying security updates on your home computers.
• Install the Crowdstrike Prevent for Home Use on your personal Windows machines (https://software.duke.edu/node/673).
• Effective immediately, Duke will temporarily reduce the session timeout on VPN to 10 hours to support a typical workday. The 30-minute “idle” timeout will remain unchanged.

Details about the joint cybersecurity advisory are available at https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-302a. More information on the already-seen impact across the U.S. can be found in Brian Krebs’ report: https://krebsonsecurity.com.

If you have any questions, please reach out to security@duke.edu

Richard Biever,
Chief Information Security Officer, Duke University

Randy Arvay,
Chief Information Security Officer, Duke Health