UBC Cybersecurity and UBC IT Communication & Collaboration Services will be launching a new email security enhancement on September 28, 2020, targeting emails that originate from outside the university. This enhancement will add a warning tag to the top of emails that originate from outside the University.
The External Email Security Warning Tag serves as a reminder to users to verify the authenticity of the email before clicking on any hyperlinks, opening any attachments, forwarding or responding. The tag is not an indicator that an email is phishing, fraudulent or spam.
Please note, at this stage, the external email security warning tag will be applied to external emails sent to staff and faculty email accounts only.
With the imminent implementation of Workday, it is critical that employees are able to spot fraudulent notifications that claim to originate from Workday but are actually from criminals looking to take advantage of the high volume of communication associated with Workday implementation. Legitimate Workday emails do not have the yellow external email security warning tag typically associated with emails that originated from outside of UBC. If you receive a Workday email with a yellow external email security warning tag, forward it as an attachment to security@ubc.ca.
For more information on how to know the difference between legitimate and fraudulent Workday notifications please visit:
hxxps://privacymatters.ubc.ca/workday-notifications
(Copy and paste the URL into your browser and replace hxxps with https).
For further technical information on the External Email Security Warning tag, including the exemption process, implementation phases and FAQs, please check out this article on the UBC Confidential Communications website:
hxxps://cc.cybersecurity.ubc.ca/external-email-warning-tag
(Copy and paste the URL into your browser and replace hxxps with https – CWL login and UBC VPN connection required).