Upcoming Security Audits

Hi, all.

Ever since last fall, I’ve been beating the drum loudly to promote how we’re focusing on cybersecurity for the coming year due to an upcoming audit in the fall of ’24.

Well, guess what time it is!  That’s right, next week we’ll be in the final throes of this audit (off-site activities started a month back).  It’s been a labwide effort among the IT admins, and the CELS Systems team has been working their butts off to make sure we do well on this, ideally without anyone’s computer or service getting cut off.

According to all the dashboards I see, we’re doing very well in CELS, and when we’ve encountered issues, we’ve remedied them quickly.  I want to thank all of you who worked with us to get there when we reached out to you about an issue with your computer or service.

What I will ask of everyone is to remain vigilant.  While social engineering is always an attack vector (because it is highly successful), and you should always be on guard, there’s a chance you may see more attempts next week.  It could even be in person, as the team performing the audit will have access on-site.  They will have Argonne accounts they can use to try to get into systems, and they will be working inside the firewall.  Please report any suspicious activity to us in CELS Systems ([email protected], #cels-systems-helpdesk on Slack) and Cyber ([email protected]).

When all is said and done, the audit’s findings will be made available for those interested.

Thanks again, everyone.