IT Connections

Glenda Ranallo and Susan Watts soon will be moving from NSM to EPS. Their move will enable EPS to provide a new service called Portfolio Management Support. The service will provide information, analyses and other intelligence to the CIO and ITS leadership team, facilitating information-rich, timely decisions about SU's IT investments. Initially, both will continue in their current functions relative to TeamDynamix, with Glenda as the Project Manager for implementation, and Susan as a member of the Core Team.

Randall Deyoe recently accepted the position of Instructional Technology Consultant in LEMP. Randy is a 22-year veteran of the United States Navy. He attended the Navy Advance Electronic School and his work included: repair, calibration and maintenance of navigation and weapon systems; quality control inspector Navy electronic components; program manager of avionics test and calibration equipment; safety officer and training. Following his career in the Navy, Randy earned an Associate's Degree in Computer Engineering Technology from Onondaga Community College. After nine years experience at Eagle Comtronics in Liverpool, NY, as test equipment technician, Randy comes to SU to be responsible for preventative maintenance inspections of technology and general repairs of classroom computer support equipment. Welcome aboard, Randy!

Updates

Keeping current with software, systems and devices

From Lee Badman, Wireless Network Engineer:

At the risk of sounding alarmist, most people probably don't realize that Bluetooth devices are subject to a different set of worms and the like. Given that Bluetooth is a very short-range PAN (personal area network) technology, the nature of the threat is arguably reduced by virtue of its limited range. The favorite doomsday scenarios for Bluetooth worms spreading include settings where dozens, hundreds, or thousands of people gather in close proximity to each other (where automated worms can try to find lots of devices to install themselves on) like:

Stadium events
Airports
Malls (especially at peak shopping times)

So what is the risk? Default or weak passwords/PINs, devices open to pairings with any other device that knocks on the door, and general careless use of the technology. Even beyond worms, general "vandalism" is possible in that in-use devices can be interrupted, and repeated nuisance "buzzes" on your Bluetooth-equipped cell phone (or Mac, or PC) while someone tries to pair with your device if it's open to all comers.

Just food for thought, and pointing out that there is no free lunch. Bluetooth is very powerful, but still demands a minimal security posture, especially as portable devices blur lines with workstation productivity and data access/storage.

A couple of interesting examples can be found at:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-9995022-83.html (includes an interesting take on RFID in passports and associated vulnerability)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH7OEwL629g (demonstration of Nokia phone being infected with a Bluetooth worm)

There's plenty more out there- simple search on "Bluetooth Security" or "Bluetooth Worm" yields a lot of information, some very dated, some quite recent.

ITS Out and About

Connecting with the campus and beyond

Arrowhead Lodge at Oneida Shores Park More than 140 staff and family members attended the ITS annual picnic at Oneida Shores County Park's Arrowhead Lodge on Thursday, August 7. Despite rolling thunder and sometimes torrential downpours attendees had a wonderful time. With the long list of door prizes, the delicious homemade salads and desserts brought by picnickers, and the Dinosaur BBQ main courses there were smiles all around. Sharon Darling did a fabulous job pulling the party together! Click here to see some of Steve Sartori's pictures of the event.

Calling all chefs! The Syracuse Post-Standard is looking for candidates for a semi-regular local food feature, tentatively titled Signature Dish. It would spotlight a home cook (not a professional cook) and one particular dish that he or she makes that family and friends rave about and request often. The feature would include a short bio of the cook, background information on the recipe, tips for others, a photo (of the cook and the dish) and the recipe. The new feature is a different spin on the "Cook of the Week" feature that the paper used to run on Sundays. If you know anybody who would be a good candidate (and there were several at the picnic), including yourself, please send your nomination to Chris Finkle.

IT Professional Development

ITS staff on the cutting edge

Publications

Andy Clark authored an Educause Center for Applied Research (ECAR) Research Bulletin titled, "Nurturing Project Management in Higher Education IT". Released on August 5, 2008, the bulletin provides an overview of project management offices in several institutes of higher education. Discussed are the motivations for establishing project management offices, the problems they are designed to solve, their organizational structure and services, where they report, and the lessons learned from the experiences at Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and Syracuse University. The bulletin can be found at the ECAR website: http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ECAR/NurturingProjectManagemen/47146. For more information or a copy of the bulletin contact Andy directly.

Conferences & Forums

Paul Gandel, June Szymanski, Andy Clark and Chris Sedore, along with Yuming Tung, IT director for SUNY ESF, all attended the 7th Annual NYS Higher Education CIO Conference 2008 - Charting the Course of Innovation: Collaboration, Communication and Information - held at the University of Rochester July 23-25, 2008. The conference planning committee, which included Paul, arranged for topical and engaging speakers such as Sandra Braman who spoke about a change in the extent to which governments exercise power by controlling information; Mike Zatz who addressed the EPA's Energy Star program for data centers; and Andrew Wall who examined how fiscal resource tensions, markets and changing social expectations are reshaping universities. This year's conference was co-hosted by The Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Buffalo, the University of Rochester and Syracuse University. Next year's conference will be held at SU.

Ron Kurdziel and Jim Pampinella attended the annual ACUTA conference in Las Vegas, Nevada July 13th - 17th. ACUTA is the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education. Ron attended a pre-conference seminar on "Best Practices in Emergency Notification." The conference had sessions on:

Unified Communications
Emergency Notifications/E911
VOIP Implementation
Next-Generation Wireless
IT Financial Management
Strategic Technology Planning
Next-Generation Learning Environments

Yin Wah Kreher presented a paper, "The Affordances of Synchronous Web Conferencing Technology for Research-focused Universities: A Pilot Study" at the 2008 Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education's (AACE) Ed-Media World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications, held June 30-July 4 in Vienna, Austria. She presided over one session, "Characteristics of Effective ICT Applications Suited to Teaching Styles in Japanese Classrooms" presented by Japanese researchers. Close to 1,200 participants from 65 countries attended this international conference.

Training & Education

Judy Thomas attended the "Power to Advance" seminar sponsored by Human Resources and the Individual Growth & Development Committee (http://humanresources.syr.edu/worklife/growth.html). Approximately 100 people attended. Kim Kopp was one of the seminar panelists who talked about their history at SU. Kim discussed resume writing and cover letters, and how to get your foot in the door. The kick-off session titled "Champion Your Career" was led by Neil Strodel.

Trust is Everything

Integrity is our most important asset

Several weeks ago a press release by Cyber-Ark, a company that develops and markets digital vaults for securing and managing privileged passwords and highly-sensitive information, provided the results of a survey they conducted at an IT industry conference. The survey reported on the "hidden scandal of IT staff snooping at the confidential information of other employees." This press release was picked up by several trade and mass market media outlets, among them Reuters and Campus Safety Magazine.

These articles have alarmed many of our users by unfairly characterizing IT professionals as being untrustworthy. While the methodology of the survey and the motives of its sponsor may be open to question, the fact that it has captured attention and provoked alarm is testimony to the importance our users place on their ability and willingness to trust us, those who protect and have access to their confidential and personal information. We all need to keep doing everything possible to combat any misperceptions of our trustworthiness and integrity, to ensure we continue to enjoy the trust of our user community.

I'm confident in your ongoing respect and care for the personal and confidential information you deal with every day. But despite our record of professionalism and integrity, our user community is more sensitive than ever to the potential for abuse of their information. Therefore, please avoid doing anything that could be misconstrued by users. Make sure that if you do need to access a user's information that you appropriately confirm their identity, inform them of what you do and document your actions. If any supervisor asks for access to one of their employee's information, please refer them to me as they need to get permission from me and other University officials for such access.

I know you will always treat users' information as confidential and not read or reproduce it. Re-assure them of this fact, that their privacy has been respected, and that campus IT staff do not view, copy or share their data. Also use this as an opportunity to educate them about security. Encourage them to observe wise password security and change their passwords often.

Soon new University policies will be posted concerning access to data and other information technology issues. Please familiarize yourself with these policies once they are published by visiting http://supolicies.syr.edu/it/. And don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

- Paul Gandel

Change Management Redesign

Refining how we keep track of our actions

In July a team of 14 Information Technology and Services (ITS) staff members began redesigning the central information technology Change Management process. A "change" is the addition, adjustment or removal of production IT hardware, network, software, application, physical environment, desktop build or associated documentation.

The existing Change Management process was designed in the 1990s and has been tweaked over the years, with erratic adoption within ITS. While the new Change Management process is being developed, the existing process will be used for ITS changes.

The redesigned Change Management process is projected for start-up on October 1, 2008. The improved process will simplify documentation protocol based on the complexity of any changes, and will provide prompt authorization, scheduling, communication, and success and failure reviewing. The Team members include: Cindy Barry, John Capozollo, Christopher Croad, Chris Finkle, David Hoalcraft, Steve Leonard, Michael Morrison, Peter Morrissey, Jim Pampinella, Trudi Porter, Eric Sedore, and Wade Stringer. The team leaders are Erik Anderson, Jenny Gluck, and David Harris. Please feel free to contact any of the team members with your ideas and concerns

New Information Services for South Campus

Team develops Group Collaboration Room in Goldstein

Students and staff teamed up to deliver new information services and to design and build a student Group Collaboration Room at the Goldstein Student Center. Representatives on the committee included Ryan Kelly, Bill Markt and Auyon Ghosh from the Student Association; Loraine Tristan from the South Campus Organization for Programming Excellence; David Pennock from Student Centers and Programming Services; Steve Schroeder and Kristen Sallee from Campus Planning, Design and Construction; Lisa Moeckel from Bird Library; and June Szymanski from ITS.

The project goal is to enhance the functionality of the Goldstein Student Center by delivering new student academic services and spaces to serve the students living on South Campus. South Campus students participated in two surveys over the Spring 2008 semester to offer their feedback on building new meeting and study spaces in their student center. Effective this Fall semester, students using the Goldstein Student Center can schedule time to use the new collaborative meeting/study technology space equipped with a computer, Smart Board, and new furniture designed to be reconfigurable to meet the unique needs of student groups. The Group Collaborative Room is located in room 107, adjacent to the ITS computer lab on the ground level of the Goldstein. New information services include a laptop loaner service with both Mac and Windows computers; the addition of Mac desktop computers in the computer lab; and a Library book return unit.

Academic Applications Group Developing Blackboard-Sakai Bridge
Project will provide single point of entry for both systems

Syracuse University has partnered with Blackboard to develop software to allow institutions to connect their Blackboard learning environment with the open source Sakai course management system. Development has begun and the connector will be released in conjunction with Blackboard NG. Jim Pease of ITS's Academic Applications group will be the primary web application developer on this project.

"This development effort is very important to Syracuse," said Michael Morrison, Manager of Academic Applications. "This partnership makes sense for us, given our large installed base of active Blackboard users."

Blackboard is a commercial system and the primary learning management system at Syracuse, hosting more than 2,000 courses per semester. Sakai is an open-source collaborative learning environment and is used to host non-course groups and electronic portfolios at Syracuse. The connector will provide a single point of entry to both of these important systems. A development agreement and non-disclosure agreement has been signed by Syracuse University and Blackboard Inc. to cover this project.

"This is an exciting opportunity for the University to contribute to both the Blackboard and Sakai communities," said Jim Pease, Web Application Developer for Academic Applications. "While the initial phase of development is confidential under the NDA, the open source release will serve as a starting point from which schools using these systems can build a better elearning experience for their teachers and learners."

The Blackboard-Sakai Connector will be a Blackboard Building Block™, an application that institutions or third parties develop to enhance and extend the Blackboard learning environment. The Blackboard-Sakai Connector will be released as open source and join more than 150 free or open source Blackboard Building Blocks currently available to the entire Blackboard community. The Connector will then be integrated as part of Blackboard's next generation product roadmap.

For more information, contact Michael Morrison.

From the CIO's Desk

Paul Gandel, vice president of Information Technology/CIO

They're Back!

You can see signs of it everywhere. The construction crews frantically trying to finish building projects, the grounds crews laying new sod and mulch, boxes of new black t-shirts, and cases of water bottles stacked high ready for our residence hall technical support teams. Yep, the students are coming back and they bring the excitement and enthusiasm that reminds me why I decided to work in higher education in the first place.

Sure, it was nice when the campus was "quiet" this summer, but I'm looking forward to the air being filled with the music of the marching band and the chatter of students talking on their cell phones as they head to class. While I'm not sure whether all the building projects will be completed and turf laid down in time for the students to tear it up playing Frisbee on the quad, I do know we in ITS are ready for the incoming stampede.

This is my fourth opening at SU and every year I'm amazed at the long hours of careful planning the entire ITS team puts in to make sure that our students are seamlessly connected to our campus-technologically speaking, that is. My sincere thanks to everyone involved with getting ready for the class of 2012. A class, I might add, who have never lived without cell phones and for whom "connectivity" is not simply a way of life but an absolute necessity. These students bring fresh excitement and vibrancy to our campus and challenge us to provide the very best and reliable technology services possible. A challenge that, thanks to all of you, I know we are well prepared to meet.

Just watch out for a CIO dressed in black driving around campus in a golf cart-he drives a golf cart the same way he plays golf!

IT Connections is published monthly by Information Technology and Services. Story ideas can be submitted to Chris Finkle by the third Wednesday of each month.

E-mail: itscomm@syr.edu

Phone: 443-2677

Web: http://its.syr.edu

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