Late last week, a world-wide advisory regarding the Meltdown and Spectre hardware vulnerabilities has caught attention of many information security teams.  You may have seen it discussed in the media.  In a nutshell, these vulnerabilities revolve around hardware used in all computers and the applications used for data protection.  These vulnerabilities could have a very large impact on IT services worldwide, which means we need to be ready.

Although these vulnerabilities are of great concern, there are steps we can take to reduce the risk. Be assured that IS&T is working to deploy countermeasures against these high level threats. In the meantime we would like to suggest a couple housekeeping tips for our campus end users that you can use to protect your personal equipment.  The most immediate and easiest thing to do is to ensure that the internet browser you use is up to date. A list of the latest browser updates is shown below.

Microsoft Edge/IE (released via Windows Update)

FireFox 57.0.4 Update Instructions

Chrome 64 (available on Jan. 23) Update Instructions

Apple Safari (coming soon, no ETA)

If you have any questions or concerns regarding Meltdown and Spectre, please contact our Information Security team at infosec@chapman.edu.  We will share more information with you as it becomes available.  Please visit chapman.edu/security for more updates.