Events

Join Mike Patterson as he launches Cyber Awareness Month with a review of the past year in cyber security at the University of Waterloo. Learn about emerging threats, key trends, notable incidents, and what ISS is seeing across the higher education sector.  

This workshop is an interactive Cyber Awareness Month open forum focused on helping employees/retirees protect themselves, their families, and their communities from common cyber threats.

Using four practical themes, we will discuss:

• Securing your digital home through stronger account, device, and network security.
• Sharing information safely on social media, through online services, and with AI tools.
• Recognizing scams, fraud, impersonation, deepfakes, and other online threats, including those affecting children, teens, parents, grandparents, and other family members.
• Preparing for, responding to, and recovering from cyber incidents such as compromised accounts, fraud, or identity theft.

The session is designed as an open discussion rather than a traditional presentation. Each topic will begin with a brief overview followed by audience questions and conversation. Participants are encouraged to bring questions about their own experiences or concerns involving family members and friends.

Accounts are easy to create but often harder to retire. Learn why effective offboarding is critical to campus security and discover how the IAM team can help departments improve identity lifecycle management, remove unnecessary access, and reduce risk.

This session is an opportunity for researchers to learn how Information Security Services (ISS) can support them in making informed, practical, and defensible cyber security decisions throughout the research lifecycle. In addition to highlighting available services, resources, and support, the session is designed to be a conversation with the research community, providing researchers with a forum to share challenges, concerns, and emerging needs so their voices can help shape future security guidance, services, and partnerships at the University of Waterloo. 

This session examines AI from an information security perspective. Starting with a clear understanding of the research task at hand, participants will explore the security implications of different AI technologies, including public AI services, enterprise platforms, open models, self-hosted systems, and agentic AI. The session will focus on identifying security risks, understanding how AI systems interact with research environments, and applying practical safeguards to reduce risk while using AI in research. 

SentinelOne Agent provides UW endpoints with Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) functionality, and Tenable Nessus Agent identifies vulnerabilities on that device that could be exploited.  Jordan will discuss what these pieces of software do, how they work, and how they provide critical information and capabilities for preventing and responding to security incidents. 

Think you can spot a scam? Visit the Information Security Services (ISS) team in the Student Life Centre for interactive activities, cybersecurity tips, giveaways, and a chance to test your scam-spotting skills.

To close out Cyber Awareness Month, we'll examine one of the largest education-sector breaches in recent history and explore the broader lessons for higher education. This session will look at Shadow IT, vendor risk, governance challenges, and how seemingly convenient technology decisions can create significant cyber security and operational risks.