Computing Services will be sending out security tips during the month of October to celebrate National Cyber Security Awareness Month! For more information on National Cyber Security Awareness Month, please click the link below.

http://www.staysafeonline.org/ncsam

***Phishing***

We have seen an increase in phishing attempts recently. Phishing emails, calls, and other scams are designed to trick you into sharing your personal information with a cybercriminal. Cybercriminals will attempt to steal passwords, credit card information, and other personal information.

Phishing emails can sometimes be cleverly crafted to look like they have been sent from Computing Services. Computing Services will never ask for your password via email!

If you receive a phishing email do not click on any links or respond to it, please delete it. You can also forward phishing emails to reportphishing@antiphishing.org if you would like to. When in doubt, please call us!

Here is more information on how to recognize phishing attempts:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-symptoms.aspx

Another example of the severity and seriousness of phishing comes from the recent “ransomware” scam that is detailed on the FBI link below:

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/august/new-internet-scam

If you have any questions about phishing or would like more information about National Cyber Security Awareness Month, please contact the Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741 or at computingservices@adams.edu.

The following maintenance activities will take place during our regularly scheduled maintenance window beginning at 9 PM:

-Critical security patches will be applied to various servers with minimal, if any downtime expected for our users.

***ASU Employee Computer Power Management- Going Green!***

Computing Services is excited to apply a more consistent power management policy to our employee computers. All employee computers will now only sleep after 2 full hours of inactivity during peak business hours of 8 am to 5 pm. After 5 pm, they will sleep after 1 full hour of inactivity. We hope to reduce campus energy consumption and costs with these policies. Only employee Windows computers will be affected. Classroom computers will remain exempt from power management settings to ensure classes are not interrupted.

We understand that some employees would like their computers to be exempt from these settings. To do so, please follow the instructions at the link below:

https://howto.adams.edu/index.php/ASU_Employee_Computers_-_Power_Management_Settings

If you have any questions, please call Computing Services at x7741 or email us at computingservices@adams.edu

The following maintenance activities will take place during our regularly scheduled maintenance window beginning at 9 PM this Thursday:

-All campus network, lab, Banner, wifi and Internet access will experience outages lasting from 9 PM until roughly 10:30 PM. This maintenance is due to a known issue that, if unpatched, will cause the network switches that control these services to lock up and cause an un-planned outage.

Computing Services apologizes for the inconvenience that this outage may cause, but chose this maintenance window during Fall Break in an attempt to minimize overall impact to all of our users. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at x7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu

****Banner Services unavailable this Saturday, 10/6****

Beginning at 8 AM and lasting until roughly 5 PM, ALL Banner services including forms, School Services, Banner printing, and Xtender (BDMS) will be off-line as Computing Services moves and reconfigures the Banner system hardware and servers into a second equipment rack. This move is part of an effort to improve our ability to make these services more highly available and redundant.

Thank you,

Computing Services

The following maintenance activities will take place beginning at 9 PM during our normally scheduled maintenance window:

-Employee computers will receive extremely critical zero-day security patches. Employees are encouraged to log out of their computers but leave them turned on when leaving work for the day to ensure these critical patches get applied as soon as possible.

-Beginning at 9 PM, Computing Services will be performing Operating System upgrades on the Faculty Email server and administrative password change server. Faculty and Staff will experience roughly 30 minutes of downtime to email during this time.

**** Banner Upgrade this Sunday, 9/30 ****

-All Banner services will be unavailable beginning at 8 AM and lasting until roughly 6 PM as we perform an upgrade to the Banner system. This outage affects all Banner services such as Forms, School Services, Banner Printing, BDMS, etc. This upgrade is another necessary step required to keep our systems in compliance and continue toward the major upgrade to Banner 9 within the next 18 months or so.

We thank you for your patience and apologize for any inconvenience these upgrades and outages may cause. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to call the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at 719-587-7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thanks and have a great day,

Computing Services

Beginning at 10:00 AM this Saturday, September 22^nd, ALL Internet services will be down for all of campus as Computing Services performs a migration to a new, faster Internet connection. This includes Internet outages to the Residence Halls, Campus Computer labs, employee offices and access to any of the locally hosted ASU servers. If you have homework assignments or tasks that are due on Saturday, we strongly urge you to complete and submit them prior to 10:00 AM, or make arrangements with your instructors. The length of the outage is unknown, but Computing Services will be making every effort to complete the upgrade before the end of the day on Saturday.

This new Internet connection is the first of two major upgrades and improvements that we are making to our Internet bandwidth. The campus bandwidth will be increased from 155 MBps up to 200 MBps, which should significantly improve our ability to meet the increasing demand for Internet bandwidth. In the very near future, we will be adding an additional 155 MBps of bandwidth to the campus, increasing the available bandwidth up to 355 MBps, which is more than double the Internet bandwidth that we currently have. This second upgrade will also bring redundancy to our Internet connection, which will further improve the reliability and availability of network and Internet services for our campus.

If you have any questions, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk directly at 719-587-7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu. We apologize for any inconvenience that this outage may cause, but we are extremely pleased to be making strides in improving the overall Internet connection and experience for all of our customers.

Thank you,

Computing Services

Computing Services is currently troubleshooting some issues that we have seen in which computers and mobile devices suddenly can no longer access the network or Internet. If you have problems connecting to the network or the Internet, please reboot your computer, as this should re-establish your connection. If, after a reboot you still are having trouble, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at x7741 for assistance. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience as we work to find a permanent solution to this issue.

Computing Services

Greetings from the Computing Services Department. Now that the initial rush from the beginning of the semester has subsided, Computing Services must perform some key, critical maintenance and security patching to various campus systems to ensure their continued security and availability. The following maintenance activities will take place during our regularly scheduled maintenance window:

-All employee PCs will receive critical Windows, Adobe, and Google Chrome security patches and upgrades beginning at 9 PM. All employees are asked to please log out but leave your computer turned on when leaving work for the day to assist with these critical patches.

-All Banner services (including forms, School Services, etc) will be unavailable as we perform critical upgrades to these systems. All Banner users are strongly encouraged to log out of Banner when leaving work for the day. Anticipated downtime is from 8:30 PM until Midnight.

-There will be brief outages to all Microsoft Servers and campus web services beginning at 9 PM as security and system patches are installed. All services are anticipated to be back up and operational by midnight if not sooner.

The Computing Services Department thanks you for your cooperation and understanding as we perform these maintenance activities. We know that there is never a perfect opportunity to take systems down, and appreciate your patience as we work to keep all of these critical services running, secure and available for all of our campus customers. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at x7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu

**Phishing Warning**

Please remember that Computing Services will NEVER ask you to give your username and password, or ‘verify’ your account information through email. There continues to be an onslaught of these phishing attempts sent to many of our users. If you are ever in doubt of the legitimacy of an email, please DO NOT REPLY to the message, instead, contact the Help Desk to obtain further assistance in determining if the message is legitimate.

Thanks and have a great day,

Computing Services

In order to address some slight performance issues that we are seeing with the Banner Forms server, Computing Services must increase system resources to this server. The maintenance will begin after 8 PM, so please ensure that you are logged out of Banner before this time.  Estimated downtime is roughly 1 hour.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but feel it is important to make this change in order to provide an even more stable, reliable Banner system during these high usage time periods. Thank you for your patience, and if you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at computingservices@adams.edu or call us directly at extension 7741.

Thank you,

Computing Services

Due to the beginning of fall semester, this is the last week that we will be performing maintenance before the start of classes. We will put off further maintenance until after the semester is in full swing, and will notify the campus again once new maintenance is planned.

In order to ensure that all maintenance can be completed in one evening, we will be starting the following maintenance activities at an earlier time of 6:00 PM. We apologize for any inconvenience that this earlier start-time may create, but we want to ensure all services can be restored before the start of business on Friday.

-Beginning at 6 PM and lasting roughly 2 hours, all network and Internet services will be temporarily unavailable as the campus firewalls are being moved into new equipment racks in our data center. During this time, ALL network service (Internet access, wireless services, Banner, Home and Shared Directories, etc) will be unavailable.

-Immediately following the completion of the firewall moves, we will be performing an upgrade to the Banner Financial Aid module. During this time, all Banner services including Banner Web services for students will be unavailable. All Banner services are anticipated to be restored by 11:00 PM.

-Duplex (double-sided) printing will be set as the default for all Student Computing Labs on campus. This change is in alignment with the campus green initiatives, and is anticipated to cut down on paper waste coming from the student computer labs.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at 719-587-7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu. Thank you for your patience and support as we finish these critical maintenance tasks before the semester starts.

Computing Services

Beginning at 9 PM tonight, (8-2) Computing Services will be remotely copying a new Banner icon to all employee desktop computers on campus. This icon will be called simply “Banner” and will be used for DEVL only. The old icon, “Banner INB” will still be used for all production Banner functions. Please read below for further details and testing instructions:

This new icon is necessary because we will be moving to a new Banner INB server towards the middle of August. This is another of the several necessary hardware/software modifications required by Ellucian in  preparation for Banner 9. We will be taking a stepwise approach for this move. You will be receiving a new ‘Banner’ icon on your desktop in the next several days. It will contain the login to the DEVL database. You will need to use this new icon to get to the  DEVL database, as the DEVL option will be removed from the current Banner INB icon. All Banner users need to test their login to DEVL using the new Banner icon.

When you launch the icon, you will receive one or more prompts regarding java and/or digital security. You need to check the box to “always trust” and then proceed. This is similar to the move we  made in June, below is a link to our how-to article that explains the process:

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

Once you successfully login to DEVL, test it by navigating to the forms you use in performing your normal functions. You should see no differences compared to the current forms functionality. You will notice that the font is different, and this is the normal font for the new server.

We anticipate moving PROD to the new Banner icon during the week of August 20th. We will send separate notification to you prior to making that change. If you discover any issues, please submit a service request to the Banner group at Computing Services with the title ‘Banner INB issue’ by visiting our online helpdesk system at http://helpdesk.adams.edu

Thank you for your assistance,

Computing Services