With all of the recent phishing exploits that UAA has been receiving, the sophistication of ourr user community in identifying and rejecting requests for personal information and usernames/passwords has been tested. We have unfortunately seen a number of exploited UAA mail accounts picked up by spammers and used to send mass email until our anti-spam systems have intercepted them. As a result, UAA's mail reputation has been damaged several times for days which produces mail delays or temporary rejections.
While our engineers have worked to imrpove our outbound mail flow monitoring its evident that our employees must become more vigilant in dealing with phishing exploits. We have been mounting a public information campaign recently and wanted to test our community's readiness.
Last week, we staged the first of what will become periodic phishing readiness tests. An email was sent to 3,000 UAA employees by the University Support Center (a fake organization) requesting recipients to provide UAA usernames and passwords to assist in "storage cleanup".
13 recipients forwarded the message directly to me asking about it's authenticity. 31 recipients replied back to the sender with a variety of suggestions as to what could be done with the request. One faculty member was so incensed that he actually replied twice letting the sender have it...
Of particular concern, however, were the 15 UAA employees who coughed up their usernames and passwords. Twelve of these employees were faculty, one was a staff member, one a coach and one was an associate dean. We are assuming (and hoping) that the 2,941 remaining recipients saw the exploit for what it was and simply deleted it.
It's clear we still have some targeted user training to do.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Anchorage data center shutdown
On Sunday, September 11, we conducted scheduled maintenance in our Anchorage Data Center (ADC) which required a complete shutdown of all equipment. Our electrical contractors and Facilities group needed to investigate and re-route electrical circuits associated with our emergency shutdown systems (UPS and FM200). We had a unexpected catastrophic power loss to ADC on July 28 which created considerable damage and was found to be caused by electrical wiring system design.
The Sunday maintenance went well. Electrical circuits were documented and several changes were made to isolate UPS from shutdown except through manual shutdown. Electricians turned ADC back over to our N/SOC folks about 7am.
System startup and service Return to Service (RTS) testing took the full remainder of our maintenance window. All services were back in place by noon. There was some drama and lessons-learned. A de-briefing is taking place right now. Tag list of actons required is forthcoming...
The Sunday maintenance went well. Electrical circuits were documented and several changes were made to isolate UPS from shutdown except through manual shutdown. Electricians turned ADC back over to our N/SOC folks about 7am.
System startup and service Return to Service (RTS) testing took the full remainder of our maintenance window. All services were back in place by noon. There was some drama and lessons-learned. A de-briefing is taking place right now. Tag list of actons required is forthcoming...
Friday, July 8, 2011
Latest Phishing Attack
We've seen increased activity by Phishers in recent weeks attempting to coax UAA users to give up their usernames and/or passwords. A significant attack on UAA's mail system took place over the July 4th weekend due exclusively to compromised email accounts of user's who had given up their passwords to Phshers.
Beginning on July 1 and continuing through July 5 compromised UAA email accounts were used to send over 800,000 spam messages. Fortunately, UAA's anti-spam system recognized and contained most of these messages. But in the process, legitimate inbound and outbound email to university users was severely delayed. UAA's systems were able to queue the legitimate undelivered/unsent email for eventual delivery by yesterday around 2pm.
Users! PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP PERSONAL INFORMATION TO EMAIL REQUESTS. UAA will never ask you for username or password information electronically. Phishers are getting better and better as masquerading as legitimate UAA organizations. Don't be fooled!
Beginning on July 1 and continuing through July 5 compromised UAA email accounts were used to send over 800,000 spam messages. Fortunately, UAA's anti-spam system recognized and contained most of these messages. But in the process, legitimate inbound and outbound email to university users was severely delayed. UAA's systems were able to queue the legitimate undelivered/unsent email for eventual delivery by yesterday around 2pm.
Users! PLEASE DON'T GIVE UP PERSONAL INFORMATION TO EMAIL REQUESTS. UAA will never ask you for username or password information electronically. Phishers are getting better and better as masquerading as legitimate UAA organizations. Don't be fooled!
Friday, July 1, 2011
We need to hear from customers!
Just reviewed the IT Call Center customer surveys for June. Good information and we appreciate the praise. But, we particularly appreciate feedback on where we need to improve. The biggest issue we have unfortunately is that customers are not submitting the 2-question survey for tickets that are closed. Out of 1,885 tickets that were closed in June, we only received 77 customer surveys.
Students, faculty and staff PLEASE give us your comments and evaluations!! Our team leaders review all survey information each month and follow-up with customers that are not happy with our services. Folks are always surprised to get a phone call from me or one of our team leaders calling about their survey comments. WE DO TAKE YOUR FEEDBACK VERY SERIOUSLY.
Thanks to those of you who have helped us improve. Please let us know how we're doing!
Students, faculty and staff PLEASE give us your comments and evaluations!! Our team leaders review all survey information each month and follow-up with customers that are not happy with our services. Folks are always surprised to get a phone call from me or one of our team leaders calling about their survey comments. WE DO TAKE YOUR FEEDBACK VERY SERIOUSLY.
Thanks to those of you who have helped us improve. Please let us know how we're doing!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Faculty Escalation line
Wanted to remind our UAA faculty that the IT Call Center continues to support rapid escalation of support calls from instructors within a half-hour of teaching a class or who are in the middle of teaching a class. This support feature is expressly for teaching faculty and guarantees that when they call they'll automatically be helped by the next available Call Center technician.
I sent a targeted email to all UAA faculty today with details about the support line number. I don't want to publish the number or instructions for use here as many read this who are not teaching and we want to reserve this service expressly for teaching faculty.
We have continued to maintain Call Center staffing levels higher in afternoons and evenings as well. This is to increase our ability to help instructors rapidly. If you have questions about this give the Call Center a call at 786-4646 or 877-633-3888.
I sent a targeted email to all UAA faculty today with details about the support line number. I don't want to publish the number or instructions for use here as many read this who are not teaching and we want to reserve this service expressly for teaching faculty.
We have continued to maintain Call Center staffing levels higher in afternoons and evenings as well. This is to increase our ability to help instructors rapidly. If you have questions about this give the Call Center a call at 786-4646 or 877-633-3888.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
UAA's Managed Print service
UAA has supported pay-for-print service at campus locations in Anchorage since 2005. The service supports print stations in 28 locations today, mostly in campus computer labs. Print stations can be accessed from computer lab workstations or via UAA WiFi campus wireless networks. Printing is simple - ussers send print jobs to a print station, go to that print station, swipe their Wolfcard and release the print job. Anchorage students receive a $10 credit on their Wolfcards each semester for printing and may add additional funds if they wish.
Managed Print has been a phenomenally successful "green initiative" at UAA. Managed Print operates as cost-recovery service. UAA users can convert existing print stations to Managed Print by paying relatively modest one-time costs. Once a print station has been converted, all costs associated with the station's operation and equipment lifecycle replacement are covered by the service. At the 28 locations where Managed Print has been deployed, we have noted up to a 90% reduction in waste paper and completely self-contained equipment lifecycle replacement.
Managed Print is funded by pay-for-print revenues plus supplementary funding from Anchorage Student Technology fees. Students - these are your technology fees working for you and helping UAA to reduce waste paper, toner and operating costs!
If you're inteested, you can find out more about Managed Print at our KnowledgeBase.
Managed Print has been a phenomenally successful "green initiative" at UAA. Managed Print operates as cost-recovery service. UAA users can convert existing print stations to Managed Print by paying relatively modest one-time costs. Once a print station has been converted, all costs associated with the station's operation and equipment lifecycle replacement are covered by the service. At the 28 locations where Managed Print has been deployed, we have noted up to a 90% reduction in waste paper and completely self-contained equipment lifecycle replacement.
Managed Print is funded by pay-for-print revenues plus supplementary funding from Anchorage Student Technology fees. Students - these are your technology fees working for you and helping UAA to reduce waste paper, toner and operating costs!
If you're inteested, you can find out more about Managed Print at our KnowledgeBase.
Monday, October 25, 2010
UAA Student Email Migration Begins
After a year of reviewing alternatives, on Oct. 11 UAA formally began migrating students to a new email service powered by Google. UAA's aging SunOne Mail system which has supported student email since 2001 is being retired.
Under the new Gmail-based service, UAA's students will be issued new mail addresses that will consist of their UAusername@alaska.edu (e.g., rawhitney@alaska.edu). To preserve compatibility, their previous UAA email address will be set as a permanent alias allowing them to continue to receive email at either address. The new email service will give students 7GB of mail storage, built-in spam/virus detection, IMAP/POP support, mobile device support over IMAP, and a full-featured web interface.
UAA's 19,000 student email users will be eased over to the new email system via an opt-in process which will run through the end of December. All students received an email invitation to create their new email account and move any messages in their old mailboxes and address books last week. Students simply go to a self-service opt-in portal and follow the prompts. The entire email migration process takes typically less than 10 minutes.
The graph shows the early progress of the opt-in process. Beginning on Oct. 26 and continuing every two weeks thereafter until the end of December, students who have not opted-in will receive a reminder invitation. Our hope is that we can encourage students to voluntarily migrate themselves at their convenience. Over the Christmas holiday, a mass migration process will take place to move en masse any students who have not already moved to the new email system. Our goal is to have all students moved from the legacy SunOne Mail system by year-end so that the system and its hardware can be de-commissioned.
Under the new Gmail-based service, UAA's students will be issued new mail addresses that will consist of their UAusername@alaska.edu (e.g., rawhitney@alaska.edu). To preserve compatibility, their previous UAA email address will be set as a permanent alias allowing them to continue to receive email at either address. The new email service will give students 7GB of mail storage, built-in spam/virus detection, IMAP/POP support, mobile device support over IMAP, and a full-featured web interface.
UAA's 19,000 student email users will be eased over to the new email system via an opt-in process which will run through the end of December. All students received an email invitation to create their new email account and move any messages in their old mailboxes and address books last week. Students simply go to a self-service opt-in portal and follow the prompts. The entire email migration process takes typically less than 10 minutes.
The graph shows the early progress of the opt-in process. Beginning on Oct. 26 and continuing every two weeks thereafter until the end of December, students who have not opted-in will receive a reminder invitation. Our hope is that we can encourage students to voluntarily migrate themselves at their convenience. Over the Christmas holiday, a mass migration process will take place to move en masse any students who have not already moved to the new email system. Our goal is to have all students moved from the legacy SunOne Mail system by year-end so that the system and its hardware can be de-commissioned.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Cost of technology - Too little or too much??
Higher Education benchmarks for technology spending have been discussed for years. Recently, expressing technology 'spend' as a percentage of an institution's total operating budget seems to have bubbled to the surface as a way to compare spend. Obviously, this measure does not include capital expenditures which vary widely and tend to skew averages.
EDUCAUSE recently published the following: 4% (DR EXT), 6% (DR INT), 5% (MA II), 5% (MA I), 5% (BA LA), 4% (BA GEN), and 7% (AA).
The annual Campus Computing Sruvey published the following: 4.6% (Public universities), 4.6% (Private universities), 6.7% (Public 4yr colleges), 6.2% (Private 4yr colleges), and 8.7% (community colleges).
It can always be argued what category exactly any institution falls into. However, it is reasonable that for a university like UAA our range is between 4.6 - 6.7%. According to FY09 statistics, UAA's operating budget was $247,984,600 and the total spend for technology was $16,164,400 or 6.5%
Further analyzing the 6.5% number, this number includes all technology costs (including both "Central" and "Distributed" IT costs) for all of UAA's campuses. Of the total $16,164,400 spent in FY09, only $8,438,053 (52%) was associated with IT Services' controlled budgets. The remaining 48% of technology costs were distributed throughout the institution's colleges, schools and administrative groups.
So, while it appears that UAA is within the general range for public universities of its size and makeup throughout the country, how the technology spend is distributed remains open for discussion. Where are the costs incurred? For what? Are there any efficiencies that we can produce? Good questions...
EDUCAUSE recently published the following: 4% (DR EXT), 6% (DR INT), 5% (MA II), 5% (MA I), 5% (BA LA), 4% (BA GEN), and 7% (AA).
The annual Campus Computing Sruvey published the following: 4.6% (Public universities), 4.6% (Private universities), 6.7% (Public 4yr colleges), 6.2% (Private 4yr colleges), and 8.7% (community colleges).
It can always be argued what category exactly any institution falls into. However, it is reasonable that for a university like UAA our range is between 4.6 - 6.7%. According to FY09 statistics, UAA's operating budget was $247,984,600 and the total spend for technology was $16,164,400 or 6.5%
Further analyzing the 6.5% number, this number includes all technology costs (including both "Central" and "Distributed" IT costs) for all of UAA's campuses. Of the total $16,164,400 spent in FY09, only $8,438,053 (52%) was associated with IT Services' controlled budgets. The remaining 48% of technology costs were distributed throughout the institution's colleges, schools and administrative groups.
So, while it appears that UAA is within the general range for public universities of its size and makeup throughout the country, how the technology spend is distributed remains open for discussion. Where are the costs incurred? For what? Are there any efficiencies that we can produce? Good questions...
Friday, July 9, 2010
The Red Balloon Project
Just read a very thought-provoking white paper by George Mehaffy, AASCU. Higher Ed is faced with three challenges: diminishing funds, increased expectations and rapid technology development. Prevailing models for HE will not be successful in addressing these challenges and new models are desperately needed. Couldn't agree more...
The role of HE needs to be re-thought as well. What do we prepare students for? How has the research role of universities changed? HE is certainly challenged by the state of our society and our nation's economic situation and opportunities. Can universities remain relevant "public square" entities in an Internet infused world? It's pretty clear to me that HE is rapidly running out of time to remain viable unless fundamental, disruptive change in how we see our role and do our business takes place.
Mehaffy's Red Balloon project is very interesting and ambitious...
The role of HE needs to be re-thought as well. What do we prepare students for? How has the research role of universities changed? HE is certainly challenged by the state of our society and our nation's economic situation and opportunities. Can universities remain relevant "public square" entities in an Internet infused world? It's pretty clear to me that HE is rapidly running out of time to remain viable unless fundamental, disruptive change in how we see our role and do our business takes place.
Mehaffy's Red Balloon project is very interesting and ambitious...
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Blackboard swallows Elluminate and Wimba
It seems inevitable in this business that the big fish always seem to want to swallow the smaller ones. Particularly when the smaller ones are attractive catches. In the case of Blackboard, it will be interesting to see if the acquistion serves customers well or simply reduces competition. I've been concerned for the last five years as our annual Blackboard renewals have steadily increased 5-7% a year despite the relative lack of comparable improvement in the product and in the face of tough economic circumstances for customers.
Will the Blackboard acquisition (now Blackboard Collaborate) create a stronger incarnation of Elluminate? We'll hope so as our faculty have yet to find a collaboration product superior to eLive! However, Blackboard will need to demonstrate that this isn't simply a way to reduce the competition and create a smaller competitive environment for their products. Time will tell...
Will the Blackboard acquisition (now Blackboard Collaborate) create a stronger incarnation of Elluminate? We'll hope so as our faculty have yet to find a collaboration product superior to eLive! However, Blackboard will need to demonstrate that this isn't simply a way to reduce the competition and create a smaller competitive environment for their products. Time will tell...
Monday, June 21, 2010
Top 3 Cloud Computing Concerns
Seems like people have bought into "Cloud Computing" as the most recent 3-day fad term... UAA has been wrestling with internal cost-benefit analyses of our options for student email service which include at least one outsource option. We dismissed mail outsourcing for UAA faculty and staff last year for a number of technical and business reasons. However, our primary concern was that privacy and security would be a problem given our discussions with potential vendors (Microsoft and Google).
Information Week Analytics just published a survey of the top cloud computing concerns. The top three concerns were "Security defects in the technology itself" (54%), "Unauthorized access to or leak of proprietary information" (51%), and "Unauthorized access or leak of customer's information" (49%). Percentages represent the portion of total respondents who considered these concerns #1, #2 or #3. These concerns pretty much align with those that we had when considering faculty/staff mail outsourcing last year.
Consideration of these concerns in a student mail outsource remains but is offset by strong student sentiment that Gmail is an acceptable platform and the fact that our own internal survey at UAA showed that many students already used Gmail. We'll continue to monitor these concerns with Google as we move toward a fall Gmail deployment for UAA's students.
Information Week Analytics just published a survey of the top cloud computing concerns. The top three concerns were "Security defects in the technology itself" (54%), "Unauthorized access to or leak of proprietary information" (51%), and "Unauthorized access or leak of customer's information" (49%). Percentages represent the portion of total respondents who considered these concerns #1, #2 or #3. These concerns pretty much align with those that we had when considering faculty/staff mail outsourcing last year.
Consideration of these concerns in a student mail outsource remains but is offset by strong student sentiment that Gmail is an acceptable platform and the fact that our own internal survey at UAA showed that many students already used Gmail. We'll continue to monitor these concerns with Google as we move toward a fall Gmail deployment for UAA's students.
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
The greening of IT - Printing, Paper, Toner/Ink
We've always interested in green initiatives that reduce costs and demonstrate stewardship for the environment. Our managed print initiative several years ago in UAA's computer labs successfully reduced printer use and waste by close to 90% by instituting a pay-for-use system. UAA students were very pleased with the results despite the fact that they now pay for any print beyond their semester allocation.
I received a great IDEA suggestion from Paula Harrison at the Anchorage campus recently that also has the promise to save cost and reduce printer toner/ink use. I had also seen a story from the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay concerning this. An item posted on Printer.com analyzed printing costs for different font types and showed that material cost savings could be generated by simply changing fonts.
Printer fonts were compared in terms of the amount of coverage they produced on a printed page. A variety of fonts were tested with coverage results ranging from 3.45% - 5.51%. Fonts that were most efficient were Century Gothic (3.45%), Ecofont (3.47%), and Times Roman (3.54%).
As an example, presume that documents are currently printed using the Arial font on a departmental printer. Further, let's say that the printer generates 250 pages/week of print. According to the University of Wisconsin study, cost of toner/ink for this printer could be reduced by $80 a year if users switched the font used from Arial to Century Gothic.
Seems small, but when you consider that our Anchorage campus has over 1,000 printers that certainly generate an average of 250 sheets/week the number jumps to $80,000 in potential cost savings along with reductions in ink/toner. Not bad...
Now the catch... For this to work, individual users would need to change the default font used by all applications on their computers manually. It cannot be done at the printer nor can it be done "magically" by IT. So, this would seem to be a "best practice" that makes sense for UAA. IT Services will be adopting this practice in all of our participating computer labs this summer.
Pass the word on...
I received a great IDEA suggestion from Paula Harrison at the Anchorage campus recently that also has the promise to save cost and reduce printer toner/ink use. I had also seen a story from the University of Wisconsin - Green Bay concerning this. An item posted on Printer.com analyzed printing costs for different font types and showed that material cost savings could be generated by simply changing fonts.
Printer fonts were compared in terms of the amount of coverage they produced on a printed page. A variety of fonts were tested with coverage results ranging from 3.45% - 5.51%. Fonts that were most efficient were Century Gothic (3.45%), Ecofont (3.47%), and Times Roman (3.54%).
As an example, presume that documents are currently printed using the Arial font on a departmental printer. Further, let's say that the printer generates 250 pages/week of print. According to the University of Wisconsin study, cost of toner/ink for this printer could be reduced by $80 a year if users switched the font used from Arial to Century Gothic.
Seems small, but when you consider that our Anchorage campus has over 1,000 printers that certainly generate an average of 250 sheets/week the number jumps to $80,000 in potential cost savings along with reductions in ink/toner. Not bad...
Now the catch... For this to work, individual users would need to change the default font used by all applications on their computers manually. It cannot be done at the printer nor can it be done "magically" by IT. So, this would seem to be a "best practice" that makes sense for UAA. IT Services will be adopting this practice in all of our participating computer labs this summer.
Pass the word on...
Monday, May 17, 2010
UAA outsources Student email to Google
Two years ago IT Services made the decision to "sunset" our Sun Microsystems' infrastructure in order to simply our data center operations. Projects have been conducted since then to re-design our enterprise architecture around directory, identity management, course management, web collaboration, and email. All areas are now either midway through transition or completed.
Last year, UAA decided to migrate all faculty/staff email to Microsoft's Exchange mail. This decision leverages our existing Voice-over-IP technology permitting users with "unified messaging" and also creates a solid integration for calendaring and future advanced services. We were also very concerned about potential security and privacy issues that outsource options like Google and Live@edu could not satisfactorily resolve for us.
We have been reviewing student email during the past six months and believe our best course of action is to outsource student email. A student survey in the past two months showed that most respondents already used either Gmail or Hotmail anyway. After discussing this with other UA CIO's and discussing OIT's recent Gmail migration we have agreed that UAA should leverage OIT's work in doing a Gmail deployment for student mail at UAA.
I'm sure there will be much more about this project appearing here in the months to come.
Last year, UAA decided to migrate all faculty/staff email to Microsoft's Exchange mail. This decision leverages our existing Voice-over-IP technology permitting users with "unified messaging" and also creates a solid integration for calendaring and future advanced services. We were also very concerned about potential security and privacy issues that outsource options like Google and Live@edu could not satisfactorily resolve for us.
We have been reviewing student email during the past six months and believe our best course of action is to outsource student email. A student survey in the past two months showed that most respondents already used either Gmail or Hotmail anyway. After discussing this with other UA CIO's and discussing OIT's recent Gmail migration we have agreed that UAA should leverage OIT's work in doing a Gmail deployment for student mail at UAA.
I'm sure there will be much more about this project appearing here in the months to come.
IT Balanced Scorecard
IT Services has recently published an interactive tool called the IT Balanced Scorecard. The link is available in the list of Key Links here.
The IT Balanced Scorecard presents eight key performance measures relevant to our operation that are organized into Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and Learning & Growth perspectives as outlined by Kaplan & Norton, and others.
Our goal is to present the key high-level measures that define our operation. Each measure has a dial guage that shows current month performance. When you click on a dial guage for a measure, a 12-month summary of performance is shown. This provides a perspective on where our organization has been and where it's heading on each measure. Goals are indicated on dial guages and graphs where applicable.
Let me know if you find this tool useful. It's a work-in-progress and will be refined as we collect feedback from the UAA community.
The IT Balanced Scorecard presents eight key performance measures relevant to our operation that are organized into Financial, Customer, Internal Processes, and Learning & Growth perspectives as outlined by Kaplan & Norton, and others.
Our goal is to present the key high-level measures that define our operation. Each measure has a dial guage that shows current month performance. When you click on a dial guage for a measure, a 12-month summary of performance is shown. This provides a perspective on where our organization has been and where it's heading on each measure. Goals are indicated on dial guages and graphs where applicable.
Let me know if you find this tool useful. It's a work-in-progress and will be refined as we collect feedback from the UAA community.
Welcome!
Technology is a key part of UAA's teaching, research and service mission. With the multitude of technology-related activities taking place within our campuses, it is always difficult to keep the UAA community sufficiently informed about things of interest.
This blog is an attempt to reach out to interested students, faculty, staff and patrons with information and thoughts about current technology issues at UAA. I hope you find the posts useful. Please add your thoughts on items you find noteworthy!
This blog is an attempt to reach out to interested students, faculty, staff and patrons with information and thoughts about current technology issues at UAA. I hope you find the posts useful. Please add your thoughts on items you find noteworthy!
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