By Katie Ellis
February 04, 2021
The Nov. 7 cyberattack on the campus network failed in one respect — no data exfiltration (withdrawal) was detected. The disruption to the campus, however, was a different matter as Information Technology Services staff worked around the clock for weeks to restore systems from backups. (See a timeline of actions online.)
Now, the University’s Information Technology Task Force and Senior Officers Group have approved measures to strengthen information security for the campus that will affect individual users. Taking a cue from financial institutions as well as other universities, and using a process already put in place for campus VPN (Pulse Secure) users, Binghamton University will begin implementing two-factor authentication (2FA) for all campus systems that utilize single sign-on protocol — the Central Authentication Service (CAS) that users log onto with their PODS credentials.
“The members of the task force represent a broad spectrum of