Information Technology Services Blog

Faculty, Staff, and Students,

On Saturday, January 19, Information Technology Services staff will be performing required system updates. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. the following systems will be intermittently unavailable:

-eCards
-eRes
-Holy Cross login page
-Kiosk and thin client workstations
-Kronos (time clocks will remain online)
-Master Calendar
-Medicat
-Net storage
-One Card laundry, vending, and Hogan load station

Thank you,
Jim Noonan ITS

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

STAR will be unavailable this evening from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. while a required system update is completed. If you have problems using STAR after the update you may need to clear your browsers cache. Instructions can be found at: http://offices.holycross.edu/helpdesk/general_computing/Clearing_Browser_Cache If you need further assistance, please email or call the Help Desk at X-3548.

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students,

On Saturday, November 17, Information Technology Services staff will be performing required system updates. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. the following systems will be intermittently unavailable:

-Advance
-CEMS
-Foodpro
-GroupWise email
-Holy Cross websites and web applications including www.holycross.edu
-Jaspersoft reporting
-Medicat
-Moodle
-People Soft Finance
-People Soft HR & HR Self-Service
-Resource Space
-Service Desk
-Thin Clients

STAR will be unavailable from 6 a.m. Saturday, November 17, until 10 a.m. Monday, November 19, while a required system upgrade is completed.

The College telephone system switch has a hardware failure that will be repaired tomorrow, Thursday November 15th between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.. During this time there will be intermittent outages of telephone and voicemail services. The switchboard will not be affected by the outage.

Human Resources and Information Technology Services are pleased to invite you to “Data Destruction Day.” On October 4th, in front of O’Kane on Linden Lane, the College’s shredding partner, ProShred, will be stationed with their paper and hard drive shredding trucks from 9am to 11am. Bring in any paper items, old hard drives, floppy drives, thumb drives, CDs, DVDs, zip drives, and ProShred will physically destroy them onsite.

Faculty & Staff, this is a great opportunity to put those filing cabinets on a weight loss program. Those bankers boxes sitting in the storage room? Those ancient zip disks hiding in the deep dark recesses of your desk? Those mysterious tapes that you don’t even have a computer that could read the format (remember the floppies?)! Bring them. Even bring things from home, with the caveat that the College isn’t responsible for its security (though you’ll get to watch it be destroyed, so don’t let the disclaimer spook you).

All materials destroyed are recycled where possible by ProShred.

Some ground rules:

• This event is open only to Holy Cross Faculty, Students and Staff. Bring your HC ID.
• As aforementioned, bring material from home if you’d like, but the College isn’t responsible if you lose it or it otherwise vanishes prior to destruction.
• Electronic media is limited to hard drives, flash/thumb drives, CD’s, DVD’s, floppy disks, tapes, and zip drives. If you have an old computer, we can help you remove the hard drive that day if you bring in just the system unit (not the monitor, keyboard, etc.).
• Get the necessary approvals before bringing stuff. Emptying that filing cabinet may seem like a good idea, but make sure none of it is needed any longer. If in doubt, ask.
• Don’t leave anything you bring to the event unattended.
• This is NOT an electronics recycling event, so do NOT bring T.V.s, VCRs, monitors, etc.

If you have any questions about the event, don’t hesitate to ask.

Ellen Keohane and David Shettler
Information Technology Services
508-793-2477

As a part of the ongoing effort to improve the College’s data security, and as mentioned in my previous email, we are deploying patch management software (Lumension) this week to all College workstations and laptops. The process is automated and will require no action on your part.

Windows users can expect a new icon in their task tray. Mac users will not see any visible changes once the software is deployed, but may experience a firewall popup during the deployment which you should allow.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask myself or the helpdesk at extension 3548.

On Guard Online is a great resource, created by the FTC and several other government agencies, for learning about how to keep yourself safe on the Internet. They have a particularly good page about phishing with examples and games, as well as videos. Below are a few of their videos.

There have been several reports of very convincing emails purporting to be from Verizon Wireless, requesting that you pay your bill.  The emails look very authentic, with logos and advertising, but link off to a non-Verizon website where the attackers are seeking to steal your credit card and/or bank account information.

Sample 1:

Sample 2:

Please be wary of such emails, and always double check the links that you click in emails.

If you have clicked on links in one of these fake Verizon emails, please contact the Helpdesk for assistance.

Faculty, Staff, and Students,

On Saturday, June 16, Information Technology Services staff will be performing required system updates. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. the following systems will be intermittently unavailable:

-Flash media server
-Foodpro
-Groupwise mobility server
-Holy Cross blogs
-Holy Cross departmental websites
-Jaspersoft
-Network file access for academic departments
-Password reset
-PeopleSoft Finance
-PeopleSoft HR and HR self-service
-Resource Space

In addition there will be a 15 minute outage of email services for faculty and staff during the 6 a.m.-10 a.m. maintenance period.

Millions of Linkedin and eHarmony passwords have been compromised per various news reports circulating on the Internet and via other media.  Hackers have managed to decipher hundreds of thousands of these passwords and are progressing through them at a rapid pace.

ITS highly recommends changing your password on these services if you utilize them.  In addition, and more importantly, if your Holy Cross network password, passwords you use for third-party College systems, online banking, Facebook or other passwords resemble the ones you utilize for Linkedin or eHarmony, it is extremely important that you change those as well.

Please also be on the alert that scammers are utilizing these breaches to trick you into providing them with your personal information.  There are reports of phishing emails, purporting to be from Linkedin, telling you to change your password, and sending you to a non-Linkedin website to do so.   Instead of clicking links in emails, visit the sites directly by typing in the URL manually.