It is the peak season for cybercrime, and none of us is immune from the risk of phone calls, e-mails or other communications that can result in inconvenience at best and significant financial and reputational impact at worst. The most common of these are ‘phishing scams,’ ‘vishing scams’ and other forms of social engineering whereby someone is posing as an organization (e.g. pretending to be a bank or a UNH entity) to get you to reveal passwords or personal data.UNH’s network is protected with managed, modern security technology and practices. The biggest risk to individual, unit or UNH impact is the behavior of individuals when a phishing or vishing attempt is made. Recently, several UNH employees have been contacted by persons posing to be UNH help desk employees or referencing other UNH staff who referred them to call to collect information. Their goal was to get employees to provide personal information, or to install malicious software on their computers, thus opening access to these computers and the information that is stored on those devices. Luckily, no serious impact occurred due to swift action by the computer owners, UNH IT and financial staff, but we need to work together to ensure that these types of scams are not successful.The UNH service desk will never ask you for your password or personal information over the phone or via e-mail. If you receive one of these calls, do not respond to their requests, but instead, immediately report them to the UNH IT service desk at 2-4242.Please help spread the word about phishing scams and this specific scam, as exposing the personal information of yourself and others is a tremendous liability to the university.Thanks for your assistance in keeping UNH a safe and secure workplace.Joanna YoungUNH Chief Information Officer