Dear Colleagues,

As the number of technologies grows, cyber criminals constantly find new ways to target victims. Data breaches worldwide in the first half of 2018 accounted for over 4.5 billion compromised records.

Unfortunately, compromised account information and password lists are freely available on the internet. In addition to identity theft, some forms of phishing utilize these resources to lure people into responding. Sextortion scams are a particularly nefarious form of phishing that often incorporates a user’s password from one of the available lists.

In response, Firefox launched Firefox Monitor — a service based upon data and services provided by haveibeenpwned. By signing up for this service, you can:

• Check if your personal data has been compromised by a data breach.
• Sign up to receive notifications in case your account is exposed by a future breach.
• Get advice on how to protect yourself and what to do if your information is exposed.

The service is free and is not limited to Firefox, so you can use your favorite browser.

Those of you that take advantage of the service might very well see that your @lbcc.edu account has been exposed by one or more breaches. Please do not be overly alarmed.

Many employee @lbcc.edu addresses have been exposed due to breaches in large marketing and data collection firms. Fortunately, the information collected by businesses of this type is innocuous and, in most cases, a matter of public record.

There was, however, a breach at Adobe in 2013 that exposed some @lbcc.edu accounts and passwords. Appropriately, Adobe reset all passwords and notified its user base shortly after the breach was discovered. Because Adobe and LBCC systems were in no way integrated, the breach did not affect user accounts or services at LBCC.

For additional information, you can watch a short video about What to Do After a Data Breach courtesy of the Federal Trade Commission.