IT Advances on Campus

IT advancesON CAMPUS

Anew era began at the College of Saint Elizabeth in fall 2016 as the first coeducational traditional undergraduate class was welcomed to campus. To prepare for this class and future generations of CSE students, a review of academics, campus facilities, and sports programs began in 2015. Upgrading the technology on campus became a major priority. Working with NJEDge and a New Jersey Higher Education Technology Infrastructure (HETI) grant, the college was able to upgrade the network infrastructure by doubling its bandwidth through a purchasing agreement with NJEDge which enabled it to expand wireless capability throughout the campus, upgrade the legacy phone system and install a generator for the network operations center.

Being part of the consortium allows CSE to receive significant savings for hardware and software purchases, participate in professional development programs and collab-

orate with the other NJ colleges and universities. The college is continually looking to NJEDge and the NJCIO Forum for guidance in current and future technologies.

CIOs have a litany of things to worry about, but ransomware has risen to the top. A ransomware discovery in an academic shared folder surfaced as a challenge to student-faculty collaboration: should non-university controlled devices be allowed to make changes in shared teaching and research folders? The stinger was that the ransomware event took place nine months prior to discovery, and there was no unaffected backup, as it was beyond the retention window. Luckily, the files were not essential, but what if they were? Because of the NJEDge NJCIO and Security Resources Group meetings, no institution has to bear the burden alone.SRG made it clear that no foolproof prevention existed (at any price), and draconian access restrictions run counter to the collaboration culture of higher education.

By collaborating with NJEDge members and developing new strategies to prepare for and mitigate security incursions, Monmouth can support faculty-student research and teaching collaboration at a reduced risk without adding cumbersome restrictions or costly preventative solutions.

The computing staff at the Institute for Advanced Study has been working over the past several years to transform IT service delivery to “BYOD-friendly” model which allows scholars to work on devices appropriate for their research. This transition incorporated a number of projects including the deployment of wireless access points across the campus; the creation of a secure, authenticated, ubiquitous wireless network for scholars and staff; participation in the eduroam initiative; improvements in identity management, directory services and authorization systems; augmenting the Internet and I2 bandwidth available; as well as numerous improvements to the data security infrastructure. The result is a campus which offers scholars the flexibility for connectivity and

interactivity that they seek, while simultaneously maintaining IT’s ability to support and protect users and their data.

These transitions have been aided in several ways by membership to NJEDge. Most notable is the ease, availability and affordability with which IAS is able to add additional bandwidth, as well as to leverage the efforts of NJEDge’s strategic peering initiatives. The consortium’s VMware purchasing program allowed for the quick scaling of the institute’s systems. Federated identity management has made possible local and regional partnerships that extend BYOD service model beyond physical walls. Lastly, but certainly not least, the ability to work closely with peers and partners throughout the NJEDge organization and community has benefited IAS’s projects immeasurably, making them more well-thought out, more secure and more robust.

Through NJEDge Consortium Purchasing Program, Stockton University ITS (Information Technology System) implemented a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) that is available for use by all students and employees. VDI allows for remote access to campus resources, secured by both Active Directory and Google Authenticator for two factor authentication. Transforming desktops into an on-demand service makes it possible for members of the campus community to work from any location, and on any device.

With multiple connection options the university need not support as many comput-

er labs because students can access their course materials anywhere at any time. With VDI, there is an extra layer of security under control of the IT system. Through NJEDge’s consortium buying system, the software and support to implement virtualization is acquired at significant savings.