Daily Archives: May 2, 2022

PA Forward and Informed Consumer Programs

By: Lauren Reiter

Throughout the year, the Informed Consumer committee has coordinated programs for students, staff, and faculty aligned with PA Forward’s five literacies: basic, information, civic/social, health, and financial. PA Forward is a Pennsylvania Library Association initiative that showcases how libraries of all types support and enrich an informed citizenry.

Many Pennsylvania libraries have participated in PA Forward, earning Bronze, Silver, or Gold stars for their efforts. At University Park, through the Informed Consumer series, we have worked our way up to the Bronze Star level and are looking toward Silver and Gold to join our PSUL colleagues at Penn State Fayette and Penn State Harrisburg who have already earned these respective distinctions for their campuses (If we are missing anyone at other campuses,
please get in touch!)

Over the next few weeks, we will share posts about the five PA Forward Literacies and the Informed Consumer programs we offered this year. If you are interested in PA Forward or the Informed Consumer series, feel free to reach out to Informed Consumer chair, Lauren Reiter, lmr29@psu.edu.

Many thanks from the Informed Consumer committee!
Sara Hess, Megan Gilpin, Emily Mross, Kat Phillips, Lauren Reiter, Diane Zabel

Safe Links feature to be enabled in Microsoft Teams on Apr. 29

By: Ryan Johnson

On Friday, April 29, Penn State IT will enable the Safe Links feature in Microsoft Teams to scan for malicious links in Teams messages. When this change is implemented, users may see this image when clicking on a link in Teams:

'verifying link' screenshot

After a very slight delay, they will either be routed to the destination if the link is deemed safe or see an error page if the link is deemed malicious. Users should submit a ticket to Office365@psu.edu if they believe the link was blocked in error.

Collaboration tools such as email and Microsoft Teams are a primary route for credential and data theft. The Safe Links feature in Office 365 email already stops hundreds of malicious links from being clicked in emails every day. Enabling the feature in Teams will bolster our efforts to improve our security posture and better protect the Penn State community.

This effort is in response to the Penn State Shields Up initiative and part of our continued collaboration with the Office of Information Security.