Recently, in order to increase the security and performance of the UMW website, we made some changes to the way logins are handled. For the time being, you will need to be either on-campus, or logged into VPN in order to login to the website.
Why?
Large-scale attacks are attempted against our website on a regular basis. These attacks are known as “brute force attacks“, through which hackers attempt to login to the website over and over again; hundreds of times each minute. In doing so, they have a limited potential of being able to successfully login to the website and gain access to perform administrative tasks. At the same time, even if they are unsuccessful in every attempt to login, they are still having a major effect on the performance of the website by forcing it to evaluate their login credentials each time they attempt to login.
In order to avoid these attacks, we have restricted access to the administration area of the website so that it can only be loaded from within the campus network. Any attempt to access the login form from outside of the network will result in an error message.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but it is an important step in protecting the website against potential security breaches, and to help provide the best performance available through the website.
What Should You Do?
If you are working on campus, you should have no problems logging into the site. However, if you are attempting to login to the website from off-campus, you will need to login to VPN first. You should be able to login to VPN on your Windows computer, your Mac or your iPad/iPhone with very little trouble. If you are not sure how to login to VPN, or you experience any issues in doing so, you should be able to work with the Help Desk in order to gain access.
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