By Winona Rajamohan

On Oct. 30, a number of San Jose State University students received a scam email sent under the name of the IT Department calling for students to click on said link to verify their school account as active to avoid being deleted. 

“Phishing is the most efficient way of hacking, the easiest way to get credentials from people,” adjunct professor at SJSU’s College of Engineering, Abbas Moallem said. 

SJSU students have been subject to “phishing” scams when receiving emails sent out by senders who claim to represent the university. 

The newly sent out scam email was determined by school faculty to be an outside party attempting to collect information from students. Email recipients were cautioned to not click the link attached. 

Though some recipients were informed by faculty and on-campus supervisors, some students were only aware about the “phishing” attempt when talking to other students who had not received the same email. 

A classmate of public health senior Tamana Osmani had asked her if she received the email as well and decided to not click the link after discovering she had not received the same email. 

“I do sometimes fear about my security online when it comes to debit cards and having our cards connected to Apple Pay, that does scare me,” Osmani said. 

“It still doesn’t get me to where I feel like I need to have an extra long password unless it has to do with my SJSU account or something that’s really personal.” 

Moallem is committed to his effort of informing allowing students on campus to understand the importance of cybersecurity, which is the protection of internet-connected systems such as hardware and software

from cyber attacks. 

Moallem teaches undergraduate and graduate courses at SJSU revolving around human computer interaction and cybersecurity, components of a collegiate education that he said all students should be exposed to as they enter university. 

His book “Human-Computer Interaction and Cybersecurity Handbook” was recognized during the annual Author and Artist Awards held in the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library last Friday. 

“There is no systematic way to inform people [about cybersecurity] unless they go look for information in the news or on their own,” Moallem said. “You cannot improve awareness unless it is incorporated into the educational system.” 

In his study “Cyber Security Awareness Among College Students” published in November 2017, Moallem found that 24 percent out of a surveyed group of 247 students were not aware about the concept of cybersecurity. 

The necessity for cybersecurity awareness education is the thesis of studies that Moallem has conducted. He focuses on students and faculty within Silicon Valley’s jurisdiction because of its technological advancements, diverse community and economic wealth.

Moallem said that in an environment where technology is so prevalent in the lives of students, many people are still not practicing simple habits to ensure that their privacy online is protected. 

A trend identified among students is that they have less-secure passwords for their social media accounts.

“You’re still going to be more susceptible to social engineering and hackers could hack into your social media accounts to get a lot of information from you like your date of birth, phone number,” Moallem said. “Young people are most subject to identity theft.” 

Some of the common mistakes Moallem sees young people make in regards to cybersecurity include: updating applications and device softwares infrequently, not clearing browser’s cookies and giving away social security numbers to job recruiting sites online. 

“Many people do not update their devices for five or six months and many people do not know that these updates are security patches,” Moallem said. “When software makers see vulnerabilities in the system they release a patch and ask people to download them so that they are protected.” 

Computer science senior Faith Chau shares the same observations as Moallem. She personally has noted an increase in her own awareness because she has taken it upon herself to learn about cybersecurity as part of her educational curriculum.

“Since I’m a computer science major, cybersecurity affects me a lot because we learn about how we secure our programs,” Chau said. “I feel like other majors don’t talk about updating apps and why there are so many updates for applications, but it’s something that we should talk about.” 

In light of National Cybersecurity Month in October, SJSU’s Information Technology division released a newsletter last month regarding safe computing practices such as password management tips, mobile security tips and methods to keep devices clean of viruses and potential hacks. 

Password resets are among the most common university cybersecurity measures that students are aware of.

“We all have to log in to access SJSU’s Wi-Fi but how secure is it? Half of us are filing our taxes on campus, half us are keying in our social security numbers through here,” Osmani said. 

Moallem drew out the example of routines such as locking your car when you get out of it and putting important documents in a safe or bank account, in which people are usually in a constant state of awareness when doing so. 

“You need to have this type of behavior in order to protect your digital assets,” Moallem said. “There is no technological solution that is going to resolve all these cybersecurity problems tomorrow, the only thing that we can evolve at this point is awareness.”