OIT News

OIT News – December 2010

By Office of Information Technology

OIT News

Monthly news briefs, information and announcements
Office of Information Technology, NC State University
Issue 38, December 2010

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For the up-to-the minute reports on OIT systems, see SysNews:
For help with computing problems, contact the NC State University Help Desk:

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01: Use Postini to find your missing email!
02: FOSS Fair 2011 is Feb. 12

03: WolfWise team to deploy GroupWise 8 Jan. 14-16
04: New campus voice mail system coming March 2011

05: Change your antivirus for Macintosh to Trend Micro Security

06: OIT offers new software downloads
07: Rosetta Stone Classroom to be discontinued
08: Certification of security access to Student Information System (SIS) due Dec. 22

09: OIT Lunch & Learn: “Protecting Data and Privacy in Higher Education” on Jan. 28

10: SAR training scheduled for Jan. 11

11: Don’t fall for holiday Internet shopping scams
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01: Use Postini to find your missing email!
Are you an OIT central email system user and suspect you’re missing email? Are you still getting email you don’t want? Although your spam report arrives in your inbox once a day, you can log in to your campus spam service, Postini Message Center, at anytime to view email that has been identified as spam.

From within the Postini Message Center, you can approve senders whose mail has inadvertently been blocked and block senders whose mail you don’t want to receive. You can also change the overall junk filter default level from lenient to normal, strict, aggressive, or very aggressive to help reduce the amount of spam you’re receiving. For more help with Postini, view Non-delivery of Your Campus Email and Best Practices for Managing Your Spam Folder.


02: FOSS Fair 2011 is Feb. 12
The NC State Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community announces that FOSS Fair 2011 will be held beginning at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 12 in Room 3001 of Engineering Building 2 (EB2) on Centennial Campus.

The FOSS Fair is an unconference-style event. It is completely driven by its participants, and any topic relating to free and open source software is welcome. For more information about the conference, contact Jack Neely, event coordinator, at 513-1522 or visit the FOSS Fair 2011 Web site. You can also suggest a session, volunteer to give a talk and register for the event on the site.

03: WolfWise team to deploy GroupWise 8 Jan. 14-16
The WolfWise Implementation Team will deploy GroupWise 8 (GW8) the weekend of Jan. 14-16. Please be advised that email service will be unavailable during the upgrade. WolfWise is NC State’s implementation of Novell GroupWise for its single centrally-supported calendaring and email solution. Check SysNews for updates on the deployment.

The GW8 deployment will apply back-end fixes for known bugs, improve IMAP stability, allow for ActiveSync (for mobile devices) and improve the performance of Windows, Mac, Web and Linux clients. Once GW8 is deployed, customers may choose to upgrade to the GW8 client on their computers, but this action is not required.

 

04: New campus voice mail system coming March 2011
In March, OIT Communication Technologies (ComTech) will replace the aging campus Octel voice mail platform with Cisco Unity Connection.

The move will consolidate both the Main Campus and the College of Veterinary Medicine’s voice mail systems on to one highly redundant, feature-rich platform. In addition to the traditional telephone interface, the new system will eventually offer campus users the ability to access their voice mail via Web and email clients.

ComTech is currently testing the new system and collecting data from colleges and campus departments to map individual users to their associated telephone numbers and Unity IDs in preparation for the deployment. ComTech will contact campus voice mail users in advance of the deployment to provide instructions on how to set up their new campus voice mail boxes. More information will be available on the ComTech Web site.

 

05: Change your antivirus for Macintosh to Trend Micro Security
OIT is replacing Intego VirusBarrier with Trend Micro Security for Macintosh OS X. This recent release of Trend Micro’s support for the Mac allows OIT to deliver campus antivirus support with one product for both Mac and Windows users.

At this time, all campus Mac users are requested to follow instructions for Installing Trend Micro Security for Mac OS X, which also include procedures for uninstalling existing antivirus programs. For more information about Trend Micro Security for the Mac, visit the Trend Micro’s product Web site.

If you encounter any problems with the installation, contact the NC State Help Desk via email at help@ncsu.edu, visit the Help Desk Web site or call 515-HELP (4357).

 

06: OIT offers new software downloads
OIT Software Licensing Management announces the availability of the following new software downloads: Office 2011 (for the Mac), Office 2010 (64-bit) and smaller downloads for SAS 9.2 for Teaching & Research. To see if you’re eligible to download these new software programs, please visit the links provided or visit the Software Licensing Web site. Please direct all questions to software@ncsu.edu.

07: Rosetta Stone Classroom to be discontinued
Beginning Monday, Jan. 31, Rosetta Stone Classroom, the online version of the popular language learning tool Rosetta Stone, will no longer be available to university affiliates. The NCSU Libraries and OIT partnered in a pilot program to provide the initial access to campus but regrettably will not offer the software next year due to a substantial price increase in the service.

To learn about some free software tools to help you meet some of your language learning needs, please visit the NCSU Libraries Web site.

08: Certification of security access to Student Information System (SIS) due Dec. 22
The OIT Security and Compliance unit is requesting campus deans and vice chancellors to review and certify their staff’s access to the Student Information System (SIS) by Wednesday, Dec. 22. The University Data Management Procedures require each dean and vice chancellor semi-annually (usually in April and October) to review his or her staff’s security access to university computer systems and to annually check that staff security profiles have been certified.

Deans and vice chancellors can review their staff’s security access to SIS via the Web Security Report, which shows both active and inactive employees who are currently assigned to their department/OUC and have access to the system. The Web Security Exception Report displays both active and inactive individuals who are not employed in a dean or vice chancellor’s department/OUC, but who have security access to department records. The exception report, however, is only available to SAR Division-Level Approvers. If you have any questions, please contact the NC State Help Desk at 515-4357 or via email at help@ncsu.edu.

 

09: OIT Lunch & Learn: “Protecting Data and Privacy in Higher Education” on Jan. 28
OIT’s Brown Bag Lunch and Learn series will present “Protecting Data and Privacy in Higher Education” from noon to 1 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 28 in 216 Scott Hall.

Higher education is an open and collaborative environment that requires access to information by a large constituency of interested parties, including faculty, staff, students, guest lecturers, conference attendees, and parents. Tim Gurganus of OIT Security and Compliance will present ways to keep computer information private when required and ways to control data that needs to be shared. Topics will include data encryption, privacy on social networks, as well as secure communications and security settings in Firefox and Internet Explorer. To register for this workshop, visit Classmate.

10: SAR training scheduled for Jan. 11
Security Access Request (SAR) training for campus requestors and approvers of access to secured university data will be held from 9:30 a.m. to noon Tuesday, Jan. 11 in ITTC Lab 2 of D.H. Hill Library. Please visit Classmate to view available classes and to sign up for training.

11: Don’t fall for holiday Internet shopping scams
For those of you who will be shopping online this holiday season, OIT Security and Compliance offers several simple but useful tips to help you avoid online malware and to have a successful shopping experience:

  • Malware searches: Hackers create malicious Web pages – which have doubled in the last year – with popular search terms on them, hoping you will find and browse to them while shopping online. Use familiar Web sites, and if an online search returns strange results, like a watch for sale on a car repair Web site, avoid it.
  • Malware in your inbox: You might receive an email stating your online order has been shipped or has been delayed and requesting that you open an attached document for more details. Don’t open it. Most Web sites don’t send attachments to update an order status. A variation of this attack will request that you click on a link, log in and check your order. To be safe, do not use the link in the email, but log in to the company’s Web site directly.
  • Holiday e-cards: Be careful if you open an e-card, especially from a company you don’t know.  Do a Google search to determine if the company and e-card are legitimate.
  • Charity scams: Be wary of emails that appear to come from legitimate charities, but have strange Web links in them. These types of scams lure donors to disclose their credit card information.

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For help with computing at NC State, visit the NC State University Help Desk Web site, phone 515-HELP (4357), or visit Room 101, West Dunn Building.

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