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Staff Milestones
Congratulations to the following people for their years of service at Syracuse University:
- Jose Camacho, computer consultant I at Department of Public Safety - 5 years
- Melissa Gwilt, telecommunications analyst - 5 years
- Michael Morrison, Academic Applications manager - 5 years
- Candi Patterson, computer consultant I at Center for Policy Research - 5 years
- William Keesler, information technology analyst - 20 years
Staff News
Welcome to Mindi Stoffel, Office Coordinator for the Network Wiring Services group within Network and Systems Management. Mindi was previously employed as an Office Coordinator for Materials Distribution and Warehouse Services at Hawkins Warehouse. Mindi's office is in 004 Machinery Hall. She can be reached via email at mmstoffe@syr.edu or by phone at Ext. 5197.
Returning to his alma mater after 31 years, Chris Finkle has joined the CIO's staff as the Communications Manager for ITS. Chris will be responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive communications program for ITS, will produce written communications and publications, and develop public relations efforts by identifying and developing announcements, news and feature stories that focus on IT projects and events. He comes to us from National Grid, where he was most recently Principal Communications Representative and Creative Supervisor in their Corporate Communications department. Chris can be reached via email at cfinkle@syr.edu or by phone at Ext. 1219.
Announcements
Paula Maxwell, an eight-year employee of Information Technology and Services, has accepted a distributed staff position at the School of Education. Paula assumed her new responsibilities on June 2, 2008.
Paula joined ITS in August 2000 as a computer consultant working for Projects and Problem Resolution under the direction of Jim Hopkins. Throughout those three years, she provided staff desktop support, managed the public labs and ResNet and then took over the coordination of Opening activities. She then moved to Student Computing under the direction of June Quackenbush and, upon June's retirement, became the Manager of Student Computing. She was responsible for labs, ResNet, Opening and the distributed walk-in support centers. Most recently, she managed the walk-in support centers and Opening activities as well as leading the STAR (Student Technology Advisory Roundtable).
In her new position at the School of Education, Paula will be the lead DSP responsible for the implementation of technology directions and the delivery of technical support.
The ITS staff would like to commend Paula for her dedication and service to the University community these past eight years and wish her continued success in her new position. |
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ITS Out and About
Connecting with the campus and beyond
Yin Wah Kreher and Michael Morrison were guest presenters at the 17th Annual Future Professoriate Program/Preparing Future Faculty 2008 Minnowbrook Conference organized by The Graduate School of SU from May 14-16. They co-taught three sessions, "Blogging as a Teaching Tool" (2 concurrent sessions), and "Use of Media in Classroom Teaching" (1 session) and participated in the various interdisciplinary and inter-institutional discussions and activities with the graduate students, colleagues and faculty from SU, LeMoyne, and SUNY colleges.
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IT Professional Development
ITS staff on the cutting edge of technology
Training & Education Gregory Milby and Eric Mumpton, along with other participants from several University departments, spent May 28 and 29 at Cascade Server Technical Training (Quick Start). This was the first class held for technical Web developers training on Web site implementation and management with the Cascade Server Web Content Management System (WCMS). The class attendees were selected based on a desire to obtain a mix of Academic and Administrative units, broad web presence needs of the unit, and skill level of the Web developer. Conferences & Forums
Chris Croad attended the Annual EDUCAUSE Security Professionals Conference in Washington DC on May 4th, 5th and 6th. The conference focused on IT Security issues and solutions across higher education institutions. May 13 found Chris at the NERCOMP (Northeast Region Computing Program) workshop at UMass in Amherst. The workshop focused on experiences with identifying and protecting sensitive data at colleges and universities across the northeast.
Bruce Hammond, Senior IT Analyst, attended EMC World, held in Las Vegas May 19- 22 at Mandalay Bay. His focus was sessions on managing, monitoring, and tuning, our storage systems, as well as backup, disaster recovery, and virtualization. Erin Sorrentino and John Boland got a great overview of the new Windows Server 2008 product at the Microsoft Launch Event Thursday, May 15 in Rochester, NY. The event also featured Microsoft SQL 2008 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. |
Whale Watching
How to Stop Spearfishing for LunkersThanks to the internet and email, sensitive and private information is often only a click away from criminals. You're probably aware of email "phishing" schemes which attempt to fool people into giving out sensitive information, such as passwords, by masquerading as trustworthy email communications. Communications that pretend to be from a bank, PayPal, or eBay are common forms of phishing email. While ITS tries to stop these emails before they reach readers, we will never be able to stop them all.
Recently, several phishing emails lured students, faculty and staff here and at other institutions into revealing NetIDs and passwords. The emails sent to the SU community appeared to come from ITS, and directed the recipient to reply with their NetID and password or risk losing their email account. Over 30 members of the SU community replied to these messages, resulting in their email accounts being compromised.
Even more dangerous is "whaling," newly emerging email scams that target organizational leaders and other big "phish." The "whalers" will use statements that seem uniquely applicable to their target readers. They may include specific details that pique one's interest and curiosity, and may attempt to create a sense of urgency to get a reader to respond without verifying the origin of the message.
In one whaling scheme, an email appears to come from the U.S. District Court, and mentions the recipient's name, company and phone number. It instructs the recipient to appear before a grand jury, and to click on a link embedded in the message to read the full subpoena. The click results in the download and installation of malicious software on the recipient's computer. This software-usually undetected by anti-virus programs-captures keystrokes and gives the criminal sender complete access to the computer and its network without the recipient's knowledge or consent.
It is probably only a matter of time before such a whaling scheme is attempted here. The damage to the University and our work and security could be significant if criminal elements gained access to confidential personal and University information.
In the end, our best defense is you! Please, make sure you and your contacts and clients across campus are on the lookout for these scams. Be very wary of any email that requests that a reply include personal information or directs the recipient to click on an embedded web link within the email. ITS, SU, and any reputable organizations will NOT ask for this type of information via email. Be cautious on any computer you use, be it your home, office, or mobile system.
Every piece of unsolicited email should be looked at with a cautious eye. If you're suspicious of any email message, please contact the ITS helpdesk for assistance on ext. 2677, or email ITSecurity@listserv.syr.edu . It's best to not open any email from senders you don't recognize. When in doubt, DON'T CLICK and avoid the harpoons! |
From the CIO's Desk
Paul Gandel, vice president for Information Technology/CIO
On the Horizon
As the summer seems to be finally upon us, we can all take pride in what we've accomplished toward our vision of providing the University with an outstanding technology environment that strengthens existing connections and enables new ones. So, as you pull out the hammocks and mint juleps and enjoy the summer, you can look forward to this array of exciting opportunities and challenges that await us for the coming year.
Green Data Center-This coming year we hope to have plans finalized to begin building a new data center to replace our aging facility in Machinery Hall. Working in partnership with L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, Corporate Relations, and Campus Planning, Design and Construction (CPDC), we plan not only to build such a facility, but to do so by cost-effectively leveraging outside funding sources and partnerships. Moreover, we envision this facility to be one of the "greenest" data centers in the country and make SU a leader in energy-efficient computing and research.
Network Master Plan-As we enter year three of our Network Master Plan we expect to meet major milestones in this project to provide the University with state-of-the-art efficient and effective network infrastructure. Projects that will be completed this year include the re-wiring of the Center for Science and Technology, Link Hall, Physics Building, Shaffer Art Building, and Newhouse Communication Centers I and II. Projects starting this year include the re-wiring of the University's oldest building, Hall of Languages, and continuing with H. B. Crouse, Archbold Building and Gymnasium, Flanagan Gymnasium, Anechoic Chamber and Institute for Sensory Research, Rehabilitation Center (804 University Avenue), and Henry Health Center. Outside plant work continues in parallel with the building re-wiring and new construction on campus.
Project Management-After an extensive evaluation of all our processes and procedures for prioritizing and managing our projects, we have acquired the TeamDynamix software system. This software is a powerful portfolio management tool that will consolidate and standardize project, task, time, and resource management. The software has the potential to help us effectively re-engineer our processes and achievements.
Identity Management- The next generation identity management (IdM) system will provide a single point of identity administration for the purposes of managing access to resources. The goal of an enterprise IdM is to ultimately consolidate redundant identity and privilege management systems, such as ID Card and FAST. Digital identities for students, faculty and staff will be established by leveraging information maintained in business systems such as Peoplesoft HRSA and BSR/Advance. The discovery phase of the initial replacement project is underway, during which the team will engage stakeholders, establish provisioning business rules, draft preliminary requirements and architectural design, and investigate vendor solutions.
Virtualization-One of the ways we have been able to leverage all our available resources and reduce our power consumption is through broad deployment of virtualization. While many organizations are just now considering virtualization, we already have taken successful advantage of virtualization in many application areas. That said, we won't rest on our laurels. This coming year there is plenty to be done to reach our goal of having 90% of all our systems virtual.
Portals-The great news is that use of the MySlice portal continues to grow. More and more services and applications continue to be added. As MySlice use increases and we introduce new groups, we continue to look at ways to provide improved service. We will be reviewing our current portal software and architecture and developing a portal strategic plan for the future.
Administrative System Upgrades-This coming year as we finish up the major upgrade to our PeopleSoft Student/Human Resources administrative system, we need to start the upgrade of our PeopleSoft Financial system. To make things even more exciting we will complete the implementation of our new effort reporting system. We also will need to tune and expand our new "grid computing" approaches for managing administrative applications. This new approach to managing our administrative systems' hardware enables us to move these applications from specialized and expensive hardware platforms to less expensive, general consumer hardware systems. This will result in long-term cost savings while providing a more flexible, efficient and reliable computing environment without sacrificing performance.
E-Portfolios-Electronic portfolio systems have the potential to change the way we teach and learn at the University. They allow students to capture and organize their academic work to highlight and document their accomplishments. Over the last year, we have piloted E-portfolios with a number of programs across the University. In the coming year, we will continue exploring E-portfolios and their potential for changing teaching and learning.
Content Management- Syracuse University's online presence evolved during the 1990's, as did the technology, from a campus-wide information system based on simple text, to today's familiar website with highly graphical screens based on HTML. With the adoption of the web as an important publications channel came two significant challenges: managing the rapidly growing collection of documents/pages, and removing the increasingly deep technical barriers that prevent content producers from personally maintaining the currency of their sites. Therefore, we are in the process of developing a web content management system (WCMS) that will decouple the technology from the content, allowing content creators to focus on their writing and publication.
To carry out the WCMS project, we created a partnership between ITS and the Office of Development to effectively leverage the expertise and resources of both organizations. Phase 1 milestones are: product evaluation, selection and implementation including the migration of the re-designed www.syr.edu site into the content manager. Phase 2 will focus on the creation of a sustainable ITS service that will be able to help interested departments, colleges, and schools realize the benefits of the WCMS.
Help Desk- We understand that getting our technology clients the help they need, when they need it, is often critical to their success. This is why we will be working, throughout the next year with the information technology professionals across campus to identify service improvement opportunities and implement changes that will allow us (the collective IT support community on campus) to ensure success by providing help and information that is accessible, available when it's needed, efficiently and consistently delivered, accurate and proactive.
Video Surveillence- The enterprise video surveillance project continues with the design effort. The core team has received the first installment of the design standards for the video-surveillance system from our outside consultant, Aegis Security Design (Aegis). Aegis' calculates the need for a storage system that can support more than 30 terabytes to contain two weeks of video. With the preliminary video-surveillance standards from Aegis, ITS architects and engineers are outlining and scheduling changes to the network, the storage system, and the data center. Aegis will provide the University with design information over the course of the summer enabling the build effort to start in the fall.
Disaster Recovery-ITS has received additional funding to create, maintain, and annually test a disaster recovery plan for key administrative and academic systems. In the first year, we will create the plan and test one administrative and one academic system. A DR manager will be recruited after the beginning of the fiscal year.
Security-We constantly need to continue to develop and enhance an overall University security plan. This coming year, a joint ITS-DSP project is being developed to create a set of standards, procedures, and tools for securing laptop computers which are used to access the University's confidential, enterprise data from off-campus locations. While a relatively small number of staff members require this level of security on their laptop computers, there is an immediate need to find a solution for this issue.
The bad guys are getting sneakier in their methods to try and find ways into our network via SPAM and phishing e-mails. During the Spring Semester many of our students, faculty and staff received convincing emails that appeared to originate from our Support Center asking for their NetIDs and passwords. Fortunately, out of the hundreds of these emails delivered only a few were responded to. Unfortunately, that's all it takes to give the bad guys a foot in the door of our network. The folks over in NSM continue looking at products to improve our ability to block SPAM before we all see it, and the test results are looking positive. By mid-summer we hope to have a new anti-SPAM product installed. In the end, however, it is education and awareness that best protects us from these attacks. Soon, all new users will be required to view an online training video developed by our security group to help heighten awareness to these types of attacks and other security issues.
OnBase- OnBase has officially become an Enterprise-wide application. ITS will assume support for it and work to complete the transition from ECM, as well as start to define new processes and procedures, including a governance model and a users group. This will be a very busy year as we convert all that paper to electronic images, and take further advantage of this exciting technology!
Research Computing Initiatives- The lack of a centralized computer resource at SU dedicated for research purposes has made it difficult for some researchers to perform certain computationally demanding calculations. ITS has approached this challenge by leading two different initiatives: accessing NYSGrid and acquiring a research-dedicated computer cluster for researchers at SU. NYSGrid is a partnership among Syracuse University and seven other institutions that have connected various computer clusters into a master grid, which is located at the Center for Computational Research (CCR) at SUNY Buffalo. During the first week of June, Ercan Dumlupinar, a doctoral student in Professor Murthy's group in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, started to submit computationally intensive jobs to the grid of clusters. These calculations will be running constantly for a period of at least 2 months. With the work developed to run Ercan's calculations, we hope to open the NYSGrid to other SU researchers soon.
This type of grid computing is not suitable for all researchers on campus, so ITS has collaborated with a group of professors from several departments (Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science and Engineering, Physics and Maxwell) to seek federal grants to build a centralized, state-of-the-art computer resource. This resource will support SU's computational research on campus and enhance undergraduate and graduate education, providing theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience in applications of high performance computing techniques.
This list, as ambitious as it is, highlights only some of our key projects. Clearly, we have a challenging year ahead of us, and I'm confident we are ready to take it on. I hope you have a great, safe summer. I look forward to continuing our work together to support the University's vision of scholarship in action.
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IT Connections is published monthly by Information Technology and Services, CIO Office. The communications contact is Chris Finkle.
Please submit story ideas to Chris by the second Wednesday of each month. |
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