Entries Tagged 'Maintenance Announcements' ↓

****Banner Password Complexity-enhanced security for ASU data****

In accordance with industry standards and to increase the protection of the personal information of our students, parents and employees, Computing Services is taking the action to enhance the complexity of passwords that are used to authenticate to the Banner system. Beginning the week of July 14, and after your current password expires, you will be required to create a new password which uses a new set of standards. Those standards will be posted on the main Banner login page.

We understand that this will create an inconvenience for our Banner users and apologize for having to take these steps. But the threat from cyber criminals to steal personal information from institutions who store sensitive data is at critical levels. As always, if you have difficulty when changing your password, the ASU Helpdesk is always available to assist you.

To make storing passwords easier, we suggest installing the ‘Password Gorilla’ password management utility. This is a tool that helps you store all of your passwords securely and is controlled by a single master password. That way you only have to remember that single master password.

https://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Password_Gorilla

http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/Gorilla/help.html

****Maintenance for Thursday, July 10^th****

The following maintenance activities will take place tonight, Thursday July 10th during our normally scheduled maintenance window:

At 9:00 PM Computing Services will be installing security patches on employee computers for the following programs: Java, Windows and Office updates. Users are encouraged to log off when leaving work for the day to assist the installation of these patches.

Beginning at 9:00 PM and lasting roughly 3 hours, we will be performing various security updates on all networking and web services. There may be very brief outages as we reboot the systems, but user impact should be minimal.

Computing Services thanks you for your patience and understanding as we perform these critical maintenance activities. As always, if you have any questions, please call the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thank you!

Computing Services

****Google Account Verification- New Feature****

Google Apps has launched a new feature aimed at keeping our Adams State University accounts safe from hijackers, even if they attained a user’s username and password.

Upon login to your ASU Google Apps, such as Google Drive, Google Calendar, or Student Gmail, you will be prompted to provide a phone number. This phone number will only be used by Google to send a verification code if there is a suspicious login to your account so they can verify your identity.

The number will ONLY be used if when there is a suspicious login.  Most people get less than 3 verification prompts per year.

If you do not want to enable verification for your account you may skip it. Simply click the “skip” link on the verification code page.

For more information, including screenshots of what the page will look like, please check out this Google Support link:

https://support.google.com/a/answer/6002699

****Maintenance for Thursday, June 19^th****

The following maintenance activities will take place tonight, Thursday June 19th during our normally scheduled maintenance window:

At 9:00 PM Computing Services will be installing security patches on employee computers for the following programs: Internet Explorer 11, Adobe Reader, Firefox, Thunderbird and Opera. Employees are encouraged to log out but leave their computers turned on to aid in the successful installation of these patches.

Beginning at 9:00 PM and lasting roughly 3 hours, we will be performing various security updates on all networking and web services. There may be very brief outages as we reboot the systems, but user impact should be minimal.

Computing Services thanks you for your patience and understanding as we perform these critical maintenance activities. As always, if you have any questions, please call the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thank you!

Computing Services

*****Google Spam Filtering- New Feature*****

Computing Services is continuing forward in our project to migrate Faculty and Staff from our internal email server to Gmail. As a step in this process, we have changed our email routing so that any email messages sent to @adams.edu email addresses will now route through Google’s email servers first, then be delivered to our internal email servers.

Faculty and Staff should not be impacted by this change, but you may start to see spam quarantine messages from Google as spam will be filtered out as it passes through their servers. Here is a helpful how-to that shows what the quarantine summary looks like, how to flag items as spam, or deliver quarantined items to your inbox.

http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Google_Spam_Quarantine

For more information on our Gmail migration, please check our Frequently Asked Questions page:

http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Faculty/Staff_Email_Migration_to_Gmail_-_Frequently_Asked_Questions

*****Reminder- Banner Maintenance and Downtime Saturday, June 7^th*****

This Saturday, June 7^th, Computing Services will be taking ALL Banner services off-line as we perform a major Banner upgrade. This upgrade is required as part of the Federal 150% Direct Subsidized Loan requirement. All Banner services will be unavailable from 8:00 AM until roughly 1:00 PM.

*Also, this evening (Thursday, June 5^th) there will be very brief outages to several network services as we perform security updates to various systems. User impact should be minimal.

Computing Services realizes that there is never an ideal time to take down services, but by performing this upgrade outside of normal campus business hours, we hope to minimize any impact this may cause. We thank you for your patience, and as always, if you have any questions, please call the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thank you!

Computing Services

This Saturday, June 7^th, Computing Services will be taking ALL Banner services off-line as we perform a major Banner upgrade. This upgrade is required as part of the Federal 150% Direct Subsidized Loan requirement. All Banner services will be unavailable from 8:00 AM until roughly 1:00 PM.

Computing Services realizes that there is never an ideal time to take down services, but by performing this upgrade outside of normal campus business hours, we hope to minimize any impact this may cause. We thank you for your patience, and as always, if you have any questions, please call the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thank you!

Computing Services

The following maintenance activities will take place tonight, Thursday May 22^nd during our normally scheduled maintenance window:

At 9:00 PM Computing Services will be installing security patches on employee computers for the following programs: Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, Flash, Reader, Firefox, VLC, and Irfanview. Employees are encouraged to log out but leave their computers turned on to aid in the successful installation of these patches.

Beginning at 9:00 PM and lasting roughly 3 hours, we will be performing security updates on our Banner systems. No downtime is anticipated for this task.

Computing Services thanks you for your patience and understanding as we perform these critical maintenance activities. As always, if you have any questions, please call the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thank you!

Computing Services

The following maintenance activities will take place tomorrow night, Thursday May 15th during our normally scheduled maintenance window beginning at 9:00 PM:

Beginning at 9:00 PM and lasting roughly 1 hour, Computing Services will be expanding the storage capacity for the campus home and shared directories. This added capacity will allow us to continue to offer daily, weekly and monthly back-up snapshots in the event that a file or folder needs to be restored after being accidently deleted or modified. During this time, access to home and shared directories may slow down, but should remain usable.

Computing Services thanks you for your patience and understanding as we perform these critical maintenance activities. As always, if you have any questions, please call the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thank you!

Computing Services

Computing Services would like to give one final reminder that ALL students and employees will be required to change their passwords before tomorrow, May 14, 2014. If the password for your account has not been changed by that date, your account will be locked out.

All users can change their passwords by visiting www.adams.edu, clicking either Faculty/Staff (for employees) or One Stop (for students) and clicking the `Change your password’ button. As a reminder, we will NEVER ask you to share your username or password through email!

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See our helpful how-to on picking a strong password!

http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Password_Tips

See our YouTube video on Heartbleed, Password Changes, and more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8I7Nox6b4o

If you have any questions regarding password changes or heartbleed please contact the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741 or at computingservices@adams.edu

Thanks!

ASU Computing Services

Find us on Facebook and Google+

https://www.facebook.com/asucomputingservices

https://plus.google.com/107573503149101561873

Computing Services would like to remind you that our systems have been patched against the Heartbleed vulnerability and that ALL students and employees will be required to change their passwords.

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Employees and students have until May 14, 2014 to change their passwords. If the password for your account has not been changed by that date, your account will be locked out.

All users can change their passwords by visiting www.adams.edu, clicking either Faculty/Staff (for employees) or One Stop (for students) and clicking the `Change your password’ button. As a reminder, we will NEVER ask you to share your username or password through email!

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See our helpful how-to on picking a strong password!

http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Password_Tips

See our YouTube video on Heartbleed, Password Changes, and more!

If you have any questions regarding password changes or heartbleed please contact the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741 or at computingservices@adams.edu

Thanks!

ASU Computing Services

Find us on Facebook and Google+

https://www.facebook.com/asucomputingservices

https://plus.google.com/107573503149101561873

Computing Services invites you to come chat with us on what is new with ASU technology! To better accommodate everyone’s busy schedules, we have scheduled three different time slots in which we will be giving a short presentation covering:

-Heartbleed: What is it and what does it mean for you?

-Password Change: How to pick a good password as well as training on Password Gorilla and KeePass Password Managers

-Gmail for Faculty/Staff? We want your input on a proposed move to Gmail

-Q and A sessions and more!

Presentation Schedule

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MCD 101

Tuesday 4/22/14 at 1:00pm

Wednesday 4/23/14 at 6:00pm

Thursday 4/24/14 at 11:am

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We encourage all staff, faculty, and students to attend one presentation. We will also be recording the presentations and making them available online on our Youtube channel.

Can’t get away from your desk? You can also watch the presentations live on our ASU Computing Services Google+ page!

https://plus.google.com/107573503149101561873

Hope to see you there!

Computing Services

As mentioned in last week’s email, Computing Services has now finished taking all actions to patch our systems due to the Heartbleed security vulnerability. Now that our systems are patched, ALL students and employees will be required to change their passwords. This is a direct result of the type of vulnerability that Heartbleed exposed. Your account cannot be considered fully secure until you have reset your password. Although there is no indication that our systems have been exploited, all passwords must be changed on our systems if there is even a chance they could have been compromised.

*****Employees and students have until May 14, 2014 to change their passwords. If the password for your account has not been changed by that date, your account will be locked out.

All users can change their passwords by visiting www.adams.edu, clicking either Faculty/Staff (for employees) or One Stop (for students) and clicking the `Change your password’ button. As a reminder, we will NEVER ask you to share your username or password through email! ******

If you have any questions or concerns, or would like assistance in going through the password reset process, please contact the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741. You may also stop by the Helpdesk Monday through Friday 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM and we will have one of our technicians help you with the process.

***Password Guidelines***

When you change your password you will need to choose a new, unique, and strong password. Please see our helpful How-To on creating a strong password, including some dos and don’ts:

http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Password_Tips

What NOT to do when choosing a Password:

-Do NOT choose a password based on personal data that is easily obtained, such as your name, username, address, your pet’s name, or your favorite sport.

-Do NOT use a password that is a word in the dictionary or as keyboard sequence, such as QWERTY or 12345.

-Do NOT choose a password that is a simple transformation of a word. For example, password123 is not a good password, since 123 is a common, simple transformation of a word.

-Do NOT use the same password for multiple systems. If you use a password for your ASU account you should not re-use that password on personal sites, such as banking or social media. Every site should use a unique password.

-We strongly recommend using a password manager. Details on the recommended password managers can be found in the password tips link above.

***Got questions? Come talk to CS staff at a technology update discussion session***

All students and employees are invited and encouraged to attend a briefing by the Computing Services staff next week that will provide further information regarding the Heartbleed vulnerability, and share secure password management practices. A follow-up email will be sent out shortly with the dates and location of these meetings.

***More information regarding Heartbleed***

What is heartbleed?

Heartbleed is a vulnerability in OpenSSL that lets an attacker read the memory of a web server, which could include information such as usernames, passwords, emails, and credit card information. Some ASU services use OpenSSL, which is why we are forcing a password change for all our users.

Should I change all my passwords?

If the website you use also used OpenSSL, then you should change your password. CNET has a list of the top 100 websites, including if they were vulnerable, if they have been patched, and if you need to change your password.

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/which-sites-have-patched-the-heartbleed-bug/

Thanks for your help in keeping ASU Computing resources secure!

Computing Services