Office of the Registrar

From: The Office of Information Security

Dear OSU Community,

The Office of Information Security has seen a recent spike in phishing emails received by the OSU community. The themes range from fake service desk notices stating that accounts are in danger of being terminated to fake document sharing notifications. The Office of Information Security team would like to thank all of you who are reporting these suspicious emails — you are directly contributing to the cyber safety of the university. The best way to report suspicious emails is to use the “Report a Message” function in Microsoft Outlook. Phishes can also be sent to [email protected] for those who do not use Microsoft Outlook.  

Below you can see an example of one of the phishing emails that came into OSU with some pointers to look out for.

Phishing attempts continue to get better and more sophisticated, making them harder to spot and easier to fall for. It’s important that we do what we can to stay vigilant, to not only protect ourselves and our individual data and information, but to also protect the university and its institutional reputation.

Thank you for your help in keeping OSU cyber-safe!

David McMorries

AVP, Chief Information Security Officer, Office of Information Security

The picture above is of a screenshot of a email example showing that Jayathi Y. Murthy sent a request to view a Docusign file. Text reads: Signs this is probably a phishing attempt: 1. Email is from someone outside of OSU; 2. President Murthy is unlikely to request to view a file; 3. Docusign is its own product and will not be hosted on Google Drive.