ZotDefend: Protecting UCI’s Digital World

As we become increasingly more collaborative online, protecting our shared electronic information is critical. Over the next year, UC Irvine will be working diligently to update, strengthen and elevate our security processes to achieve new security standards that all UC’s have committed to upholding.

We are branding this initiative, ZotDefend, as we roll out our plans to campus. Many of these improvements will be happening behind the scenes, but several, like Cybersecurity Awareness Training, will be the responsibility of our campus community as a whole, making it imperative that a strong awareness for the initiative is established.

What will change?

1. Cybersecurity Awareness Training – Integrate with UCI Single Sign-On (web login) process to display warnings to users whose training is due in 14 days and restrict application access once the training becomes overdue.
2. Incident Response Process – Timely escalation of incident response in alignment with UC standards.
3. Ensure identification, tracking, and vulnerability management of all university computing devices.
4. ZotDefend Security Package – All compatible university computing devices will be required to have the minimum security packages. Devices that do not meet this requirement will be restricted from certain UCI web applications and/or from parts of the UCI network.
5. Email Duo Multi-factor Authentication – Disable UCI mail forwarders and provision UCI mailboxes for users without a UCI mailbox. Enforce DUO multifactor authentication for all university email accounts.

*For additional unit-level changes, please contact your local information security representative.