IT Newsletter 10 by UMass Lowell

IT Newsletter 10.10_Math News 02.06 10/20/10 8:04 PM Page 1

Fall 2010 Non-Profit Org U.S. Postage

PAID Lowell, MA Permit No. 69

The Office of Information Technology University of Massachusetts Lowell Lowell, MA 01854

From the CIO… Office of Information Technology Rich Zera.................CIO, Information Technology Email: Richard_Zera@uml.edu Tel.: 2654

Cher Hugus.............Assistant to CIO Email: Cheryl_Hugus@uml.edu Tel.: 4745 Juanita McKenzie…Office Assistant Email: Juanita_McKenzie@uml.edu Tel.: 2654 Nancy Fowler.........Director, Technology & Communication Services Email:Nancy_Fowler@uml.edu Tel.: 4755 Bob Coppenrath…Help Desk Manager Email: Robert_Coppenrath@uml.edu Tel.: 2686 Ken Boisvert…Systems Analyst Email: Kenneth_Boisvert@uml.edu Tel.: 3604 Dan Ferry…Desktop Support Technician Email: Daniel_Ferry@uml.edu Tel.: 4763 Jose Guerrero…Help Desk Support Email: Jose_Guerrero@uml.edu Tel.: 4768 Megan Hadley...Student Technical Writer Email: Megan_Hadley@uml.edu Tel.: 2736 Eric Kelly…Desktop Support Technician Email: Eric_Kelly@uml.edu Tel.: 2677 Adele Lichtenberg…Senior Systems Analyst Email: Adele_Lichtenberg@uml.edu Tel.: 4753 Sarah Shutt…Help Desk Support Email: Sarah_Shutt@uml.edu Tel.: 4357 Ron Heckman…Help Desk Support Email: Ronald_Heckman@uml.edu

Mike Lucas .............Director, Instructional Technology Support Email: Fmichael_Lucas@uml.edu Tel.: 4681 Andy Alfano…System Manager Email: Andrew_Alfano@uml.edu Tel.: 4657 Dave Hadley…Media Technician Email: David_Hadley@uml.edu Tel.: 2505 Bill Suppa…Syst Analyst Network Comp Eng. Email: William_Suppa@uml.edu Tel.: 4664 David Tennyson…Technical Support Email: David_Tennyson@uml.edu Tel.: 4655 Steve Drescher.......Director, Network and Voice Services Email: Stephen_Drescher@uml.edu Tel.: 2680 Bill Anyon…Voice Services Technician Email: William_Anyon@uml.edu Tel.: 2665 Marcie Byrd…Network Security Mgr Email:Marcie_Byrd@uml.edu Tel.: 2680 Brian Carr…Network Operations Specialist Email: Brian_Carr@uml.edu Tel.: 2680 Mary Coppenrath…Clerical Services Email: Mary_Coppenrath@uml.edu Tel.: 4101 Mary Ferraro…Clerical Services Email: Mary_Ferraro@uml.edu Tel.: 4101 Tony Kolodziej…Security Specialist Email: Anthony_Kolodziej@uml.edu Tel.: 4761 Chris McGee…Network Support Specialist Email: Christopher_McGee@uml.edu Tel.: 2680 John Ouellette…Mgr of Network & Security Oper Email: John_Ouellette@uml.edu Tel.: 2680 Marc Place…Network Analyst Email: Marc_Place@uml.edu Tel.: 2680 Linda Shepard…Administrative Assistant I Email: Linda_Shepard@uml.edu Tel.: 4101

Lori Dembowitz…Director, IT Project Management Email: Lori_Dembowitz@uml.edu Tel.:2684 Rich Conley…Project Manager e*mpac/iSiS Email: Richard_Conley@uml.edu Tel.: 4794 Doreen Bray…Senior Functional Analyst Email: Doreen_Bray@uml.edu Tel.: 4777 Norma Clark…PS Functional Analyst Email: Norma_Clark@uml.edu Tel.: 4764 Doreen Nicastro…Resource 25 Project Manager Email: Doreen_Nicastro@uml.edu Tel.: 2736 Dan Bedard…Document Imaging Project Manager Email: Daniel_Bedard@uml.edu Jim Packard............Director, Enterprise System Services Email: James_Packard@uml.edu Tel.: 2668 Steve Athanas…Enterprise Systems Engineer Sr. Email: Stephen_Athanas@uml.edu Tel.: 4767 Nicole Clarke…Enterprise System Analyst Email: Nicole_Clarke@uml.edu Tel.: 4754 Nick Siakotos…Server Administrator Email: Nicholas_Siakotos@uml.edu Tel.: 3626 Kevin Smith…Enterprise System Analyst Email: Kevin_Smith@uml.edu Tel.: 4769 Martha Sullivan…Enterprise System Analyst Email: Martha_Sullivan@uml.edu Tel.: 4756 Ron Vaillancourt…Operations Center Manager Email: Ronald_Vaillancourt@uml.edu Tel.: 3610 Doug Yencho… Server Administrator Email: Douglas_Yencho@uml.edu Tel.: 3607

It’s hard to believe that I have just completed my first year at UMass Lowell. Let me begin by thanking the faculty, staff and students of UML for not only the warm welcome, but also the tremendous support you have all shown for some important initial changes in IT. I also cannot stress strongly enough the positive support, creativity, and hard work of the Department of Information Technology staff for their superb efforts. The accomplishments of the past year are really a compliment to the IT staff and our great users. To quote Winston Churchill, “This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Through your support, we have accomplished a lot, but what’s coming up in the future is really the leveraging of our initial steps to reach for loftier goals. In the past year, together we formed a University-wide strategic planning group and developed a long-range IT Strategic Plan 2020 document to help guide our future directions. Next, we’ll be establishing some advisory committees to help us understand your needs and bounce around ideas on ways to build the infrastructure and support we all desire. Since our primary goal is to serve our students in their academic pursuits, and with the strong support of Academic Affairs and our faculty, we have achieved 100% Technology-Enhanced Classrooms (aka “smart” classrooms), and with a new agreement with Echo 360, our ten-fold increase of full lecture-capture classrooms from 6 to 60 is the largest number of such rooms in New England. We have completed a bi-directional network backbone which helps ensure any single point of failure on the backbone will not bring down the campus network. We have also established a second Internet path, with enhanced Internet 2 capabilities, to ensure our connectivity to the outside world is robust and redundant. Some of our oldest cabling has been replaced, and wireless has been expanded. Most recently, we completed a study of cellular telephone signals and the many weak points on campus, and are beginning to work with the cellular carriers to improve signals. Student Affairs has created a new position to provide additional support directly for students, particularly but not exclusively our resident student population. We are in the process of prioritizing and will soon be ordering hundreds of new microcomputers for many of our student labs across campus, and are in the planning stages for a long-range Life Cycle Replenishment program for all University-owned microcomputers based on a Total Cost of Ownership model. Continued on page 4

Articles written by Megan Hadley. Article content provided by Information Technology Staff.

http://www.uml.edu/it

Lighthouse Project makes UMass Lowell a guiding light UMass Lowell is once again leading the way in higher education instructional technology! Echo 360 is an automated lecture capture program which allows for a faculty member’s course to be recorded and posted online along with any other materials the instructor chooses to include in the lesson. As part of a movement to continue to enhance classroom technology, UMass Lowell has been chosen by Echo 360 to join together and create the Lighthouse Project, which significantly aids in the expansion of lecture capture environments within the University. As the title of the project suggests, UMass Lowell will become a lighthouse: the university will be a guiding light to other establishments on the impact lecture capture has on students in higher education at an enterprise level. UMass Lowell was specifically chosen for this project because of a deep relationship with Echo 360 and experience with lecture capture. UMass Lowell was Echo 360’s third customer and has stayed connected to the company since the relationship began. Since that time, the university has had great success implementing the lecture capture technology on a small scale. With this project,

however, UMass Lowell has the opportunity to implement it on an enterprise wide scale. Until recently, only a select number of rooms were equipped with lecture capture. Before the Lighthouse Project, six classrooms were outfitted with this lecture capture technology. From the collaboration with Echo 360, that number will increase ten-fold, with 60 rooms that will be fully equipped with lecture capture systems. This total includes O’Leary 222, a space used for both classes and special events. The reason it is possible to so drastically increase the number of lecture capture classrooms is all because of the Lighthouse Project. Because of the collaboration, UMass Lowell is able to receive discounted prices on a sliding scale for the lecture equipment, allowing the university to purchase a volume of equipment that otherwise could not be afforded. In exchange for this, Echo 360 will also benefit. UMass Lowell will be releasing joint press releases with the company regarding their product. This press release will explain the start of this Lighthouse Project, and will be distributed to higher education media, trade outlets, and other universities. Also, from Continued on page 5

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IT Auditing take a deeper look into UMass Lowell’s decentralized IT Departments Recently, many offices were part of a campus wide decentralized IT auditing process. While the idea of an audit sounds daunting, these audits were not meant to scare or punish people they were meant to help the decentralized IT departments with understanding how they could provide a better and more secure service. First it is important to understand what exactly a decentralized IT department is. For decentralized offices, the servers and applications are all within that department outside of the centralized IT offices. There is also a hybrid that exists between centralized and decentralized, where only the applications are managed independently. In this IT auditing process, the goal is to assure that, in these decentralized IT areas, confidentiality is protected, there is integrity in the data, and the systems are available to be used. Other audits of this sort have already happened in other UMass campuses. Before the auditing process could begin, the decentralized IT areas needed to identify themselves. Then, they attended a presentation describing the logic behind the IT audits. High Education institutions, as of late, have become a particular target for cyberhacking and internet crime because they are not protected as securely as other establishments, such as banks, have become over the years. Because of the nature of universities and colleges, the systems tend to be more open, and there is often a lack of resources to protect the information. A frightening example of the vulnerability of higher education establishments comes from an incident back in 2008 at UMass Amherst. The university experienced a breech in one of their decentralized IT areas, and thousands of social security numbers were compromised. The fact this issue originated from a decentralized area was quite concerning, because in a school this size, there is a vast number of decentralized IT areas. Immediately in the auditing process, it was clear that most departments had the basic configuration issues under control, such as

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using strong passwords on the systems. However, decentralized offices had trouble in the more complicated areas. Overall, one of the main issues with the decentralized offices was the fact there was a lack of data inventory. The big problem with keeping up with the data inventory is that the managers of those offices could forget about any sensitive data on their systems. This is an incredible security issue because there could be a breach of sensitive data, and the managers may hardly notice because they were not even aware in the first place the data was there. Another inventory issue that was discovered in the auditing process was improper disposal of old systems. The severity of this problem was discovered when the auditing crew decided to go dumpster diving. In one of the UMass Lowell dumpsters, they discovered multiple university-owned computers with the hard dives still in tack. They took the computers out of the dumpster and checked out the hard drives, and upon doing so found sensitive information still saved on it, such as credit card information. They were able to identify what department the computer belonged to. However, they were lucky no one with ill intentions discovered the computers first and were able to use the personal information they discovered. This is just an example of the improper disposal of computers and other technology found on this campus. Rogue wireless devices are another problem that affects more than just the offices using them. Anyone using wireless on UMass Lowell must be using a UML wireless network, such as uml-admin. However, many people are bringing in their own wireless devices. Not only are these wireless devices incredibly insecure, they also diminish network capacity, slowing down the internet for everyone else. The student labs have also been checked as part of this auditing process. The issue found with these labs is that they do not authenticate through the active directory, which means when students use a computer in a lab, they sign in as a guest. For example, a student uses a computer lab and works on a document that is shared on a flash drive. If that flash drive is infected with a virus, it will then spread it to the computer, and the student may go on their way totally unaware of the virus. While IT security can go and take care of the virus, the user could be

unknowingly spreading the virus elsewhere. If the system was authenticating through the active directory and students had to log in to access computers in the labs, IT may even be able to identify where the virus came from and help that individual get rid of it. Now that the auditing process has been completed, the next step is to begin working toward different goals. The biggest goal moving forward is to improve and enhance communications. There will be a lot of work with the IT security office to create written procedures that the managers of these decentralized offices must follow. If all the processes and responsibilities are more clearly organized, formalized and documented, the decentralized areas will be well-informed of what they must do. Subsequently, all IT areas should be managed professionally, meaning managers must find an IT resource to assist them with their technical responsibilities, or become more educated in IT themselves. The goal of these audits has not been to centralize everyone into IT.

Certainly, some areas, such as research, really do need to remain decentralized so they can do their own work properly. However, managers have fewer technical responsibilities if they centralize with IT. In the end, it will be up to the managers in one way or another to make sure to fulfill their responsibilities. In the world of Higher Education, there is no perfect model for how to run a university, especially on the technological side. Still, with technology and computers playing such an immense role in the functionality of higher education businesses, it is crucial to stay on top of everything while paying particular attention in protecting the personal information of the students, staff, and faculty members and always assure all technological information is appropriately secure. Once the goals of this auditing process have been achieved, IT responsibilities will be more streamlined for the decentralized offices, ultimately increasing efficiency and security.

Beware of phishing It has become a rampant problem on campus: faculty and staff members are being plagued by waves of phishing e-mails. These e-mails are often made to look legitimate, and ask users for sensitive information. More commonly, the e-mails are meant to look as if they are coming from the IT department and are asking for passwords. Faculty and staff must remember that UMass Lowell will never ask you for your password or any other personal information. Despite several email alerts sent from the IT Security Office this summer and fall, this is still a problem on campus. The problem is that when an individual replies to a phishing e-mail, it can affect the entire university community. Some people have responded to a phishing email and providing their email password and other information to an external entity, who was presumably posing as a member of UML IT. As a result, those individual faculty/staff email accounts were taken over by this external individual and used to send many thousands of spam e-mails around the world. Major Internet Service Providers have no choice in such cases but to block ALL email coming from the offending domain (in this case, anything coming out of uml.edu). Therefore, members of the UMass Lowell community may see some of their email being rejected by Yahoo, MSN, Gmail and others. Of course, UML IT has taken steps to try to minimize the damage by blocking further spam being sent from the offending accounts, and is trying to negotiate with the ISP’s to convince them that we have handled the situation and they should “un-block” us. Depending on the ISP, some of them respond quickly, while others maintain that it will take 48 – 72 hours for the “blacklisting” to expire. In regards to other phishing e-mails, IT spam filters can usually block the bulk of any phishing e-mails, but they still slip through. Because of this, it is crucial that faculty and staff members be critical of any e-mails they receive. If it asks for ANY personal information, be suspicious of that e-mail and, most importantly, DO NOT RESPOND. It is most likely not a legitimate e-mail. Not only does it affect the entire University community, but it also puts that individual at a great risk of having their sensitive, personal information compromised and exploited. If there are any questions about the legitimacy of an e-mail, call the Help Center at x4357. Otherwise, always be aware of the presence of phishing e-mails and be very careful what kind of information you send out online.

Document Imaging Pilot The UMass Document Imaging project, which allows electronic files to be created through scanning paper documents has come to fruition. This University of Massachusetts project, which UMass Lowell is participating in, is also being implemented in UMass Boston and Dartmouth. The system has been installed in the Office of Graduate Admissions as the pilot. They will be using the software to scan documents that new grad applicants submit for the Spring 2011 semester. In addition to the automated flow of documents from Graduate Admissions to Graduate Program Coordinators reviewing the applications, the Document Imaging system makes linking these documents to student records in Peoplesoft efficient and secure. Another facet of this project is the imaging of historical records. By law, UMass Lowell is required to keep certain documents and files archived for so many years.

With the high number of students and faculty/staff members UMass Lowell has had over the years, these records have accumulated enough to fill four trailers. By using document imaging to create electronic versions of these documents, those departments will no longer need to preserve paper copies. The IPI building on East Campus has been prepared to be the site of this scanning, with the systems soon to be installed and the historical files moved in. While, like any new system, this may take some time for the users to adjust to, the benefits surely outweigh any adjustment period. For one, as this project gets fully underway and as it eventually expands to more departments, it will start to save more and more space. Instead of needing to retain rooms and even trailers full of paper records, all the files will be conveniently stored online. Many of these digital files will be attached to the individual’s PeopleSoft account,

so looking for a specific file that has been scanned in is as easy as just looking up an ID number. Using the Office of Graduate Admissions as an example, when a Graduate Program Office needs to view paperwork an applicant submits, such as a letter of recommendation or a writing sample, the authorized reviewer will have access to see it all online instead of needing the documents delivered to them. This project is also another way UMass Lowell is trying to go “green.” Since documents will be stored online, any of the files can be securely shared and distributed to multiple people without needing to make copies, and documents will be kept organized and secure. This workflow-enabled system is believed to help meet one of the primary goals of this project, which is to drive efficiencies in administrative processing.

Faculty/Staff E-mail is getting a facelift The new year brings a new, improved e-mail messaging environment for Faculty and staff members. Exchange 2010 is coming, which will bring better performance, larger mailboxes, and a new user interface to web-based email. Due to a complete redesign of the Exchange architecture, many users will notice significant improvements loading messages, searching, and overall network connectivity to the servers. All of our users will enjoy a 3 GB mailbox, an increase from 500 MB quota that is currently in place. While users should continue to manage their mailbox carefully, the increase is a welcomed feature. The upgrade to Exchange 2010 will support Outlook 2003/2007 and Outlook 2010 (when available to the campus). Perhaps the most significant improvement will be the new and improved look to Outlook Web Access. For example, messages can be grouped, displayed, and

sorted by topic of conversation, which allows you to see the entire message thread. This is called “conversation” view. Users will also notice they have access to a set of predefined filters to quickly search the contents in folders. Like its full-featured Outlook client, the web-based version will allow for users to view shared calendars giving the ability to check schedules and availability of users. Lastly, the same look and feel will be the same across multiple

browsers such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome. How cool is that? The current implementation schedule calls for an email “blackout” during the last week of December. Over two-thousand accounts and twelve million email messages will be migrated during this time. Our Go Live date will be during the first week of January 2011. Stay tuned for more announcements!

ICC Upgrades Continue Though UMass Lowell has been in possession of the Inn & Conference Center for only just over a year, the technological upgrades and renovations have yet to cease, all to better the space available. Extensive A/V work is still being performed in the grand ballroom. In the two sections of the grand ballrooms, two sets of screens and projectors are being installed. This equipment, however, is different from average A/V equipment. It is being installed with a motorized projection lift, so that, when not in use, it will retract and disappear up into the ceiling, creating a very streamline appearance. There will also be a sleek touch pad control system in place to control the screens and projectors. Through the control panel, users can control what is being projected onto the screens, and whether they will project the same images, such as when the ballroom is opened up, or whether they will show different images, such as in a case where the ballroom is divided. The grand ballroom is not the only function space getting an upgrade; the Tsongas Room in the ICC is also undergoing some enhancements. This professional conference room is going to be fully-equipped with high-end video conference software. All of these enhancements are meant to encourage those within UMass Lowell to host internal functions at the ICC, giving them the best and more user-friendly A/V equipment to work with. Also, these upgrades are attractive selling points for those outside UMass Lowell looking to rent the space for events, which will bring move revenue into this university.

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Fall 2010 Opening at the Help Center The start of the semester is always a hectic time at the Help Center. Most students and faculty are returning for the new school year after three-months away from UMass Lowell. For many, e-mail and iSiS accounts have not been checked in some time, and those passwords have either expired or been forgotten. In addition to password issues, students, faculty, and staff also have many other technology related issues they must resolve at the start of a new year. To address this influx of calls to the Help Center and help manage the queue, four Robert Half Technology contractors were hired. These employees were hired from the beginning of August to the middle of September and joined the three full-time employees already on phone support. In addition to the four Robert Half Technology contractors to address phone support issues, another Robert Half Technology employee was brought in for desktop support, joining the three full-time employees on desktop support. Between phone and desktop support, the total number of full time employees was 11, more than doubling the existing number of full time employees at the Help Center. Even with the additional support, the Help Center has still been very busy over the past seven weeks. In the month of August, because of the all-time high enrollment, as well as the new student e-mail system, the Help Center received 10,188 phone calls. In the first half of September with the start of the semester, an incredible 5,269 phone calls were additionally received at the Help Center. For a short seven-week period, the Help Center received an astounding total of 15,457 calls. It was the addition of the Robert Half employees that made it possible to manage all those phone calls. Even with their assistance, things were still hectic for those seven weeks at the Help Center. Many of those phone calls were not easily resolved by phone support in just a couple minutes. 3 IT Interface 4

Those employees on phone support try to do as much as they can to resolve each technical issue over the phone before turning it over to desktop support. To resolve many of the computer issues over the phone requires time to troubleshoot and walk the callers through many steps. Even when dealing with password issues, phone support would walk callers through the reset process and make sure their new passwords were working properly. It is also important to understand that questions to the Help Center come through in more ways than just phone calls. Those 15,457 calls do not include any questions coming through e-mail, voicemail, or walk-ups. All of these kept the Help Center working nonstop to support all returning faculty, staff and students for the opening of the Fall 2010 semester. UMass Lowell is a technological campus, and support is necessary to assure that faculty, staff and students can take full advantage of that technology. The addition of the Robert Half employees for that seven-week period was designed to help with the call volume, and make sure that the University community was properly taken care of. This was just part of the Help Center’s commitment and ongoing effort to improve the service they provide to the University, and they will continue to do so as lessons learned from the call volume allow the Help Center to forecast and strategically plan according, allowing them to provide the service the campus community requires.

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From the CIO… We have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars by outsourcing student e-mail to “the cloud”, and are finalizing a major upgrade of faculty and staff e-mail to Exchange 2010. We have also initiated an aggressive program of “virtualizing” many central servers as part of a cost-avoidance program for the future. I invite you to read through this edition of the IT Interface newsletter to view articles on some other steps we are taking. These, and dozens of other initiatives, are part of our building a “shared vision” of where UML needs to head in the future. Your understanding and support as we initiate changes and work through any growing pains is greatly appreciated. Rich Zera

NVivo Site-License Acquired NVivo, the most widely used qualitative research tool, is now available for faculty, staff members, and students. It has been available on a limited license for some time at UMass Lowell, but it is only quite recently that is has been made available campus-wide for everyone, thanks to Academic Affairs. NVivo is a qualitative data analysis tool. Other data analysis tools have been available on campus, but those programs have focused on quantitative data, which uses statistical programs for analysis, such as SPSS. However, because of the unstructured nature of qualitative research, it cannot be translated into numbers and is not based on variables as most mathematical or scientific research may be. Because of this reason, statistical programs are not as effective for analyzing qualitative data. NVivo is able to look at qualitative data in a way that creates an in depth analysis by organizing the data inputted and examining relationships within the information. Because of the unstructured nature of research from the social sciences, NVivo is the perfect program for interpreting data from those fields. Since students do, in fact, have access to this program, they will be able to take advantage of NVivo for different aspects of their education. For example, NVivo could be useful for students working on a thesis, working on research they plan to present, or even be an extra aid for students when working on a research project for class.

While NVivo 8 is currently the most recent version on the market, NVivo 9 will be available in the coming months. To keep the programs available up to speed, the newest version will be made available to UMass Lowell come the spring semester. At that time, training seminars will be conducted to educate those interested in the features of the new version. For those who decide to take advantage of what the program has to offer, they will notice an increase in the efficiency of how they process their research. It will increase the efficiency and the level of sophistication of the data analyzed. Having NVivo on campus brings the most robust tool for constructing social science data to UMass Lowell. Because NVivo is an international player in qualitative methodology, having the campus-wide license will continue to build UMass Lowell’s cutting edge reputation as a leader in research. If students, faculty, or staff members would like to take a copy of NVivo out on loan, they can either stop by the Help Center on North Campus or the Centers for Women and Work on South Campus. When there, be ready to present a UMass Lowell ID to receive a copy of the program. If anyone has questions or general troubleshooting with NVivo, they can call the Centers for Women and Work. To install copies of NVivo in a computer lab, contact the Help Center or the Centers for Women and Work.

Lighthouse Project makes UMass Lowell a guiding light UMass Lowell, Echo 360 will get the idea of how lecture capture equipment can be deployed in a large-scale environment. In essence, UMass Lowell will become an example of lecture capture for all to see. In addition to the 60 lecture capture classrooms , there are also 50 licenses available for personal capture. Personal capture would allow an instructor to record information from a personal computer, including laptops. This will allow for faculty to transmit information to students for a course outside of the actual classroom, enhancing the learning experience with supplemental information. On top of that, there will also be a mobile lecture capture unit for use in different locations. For example, if there is an event taking place in the CRC or in Alumni Hall, the portable cart can be brought over to capture the event. From the Lighthouse Project comes a wonderful research opportunity that some faculty members may be interested in. There are five grants available to faculty members who would like to conduct research regarding the Echo 360 lecture capture and what impact it has on student learning. As part of this collaboration, there is added technical support to assist with the installation of all these new systems. With the extra

support, these systems are able to be installed at a faster pace than they could possibly be without. With this project, one of the biggest goals is to make sure the faculty is aware of the lecture capture technology around them. At present, there are many faculty members who teach in classrooms equipped with Echo 360 lecture capture who do not take advantage of the system at their disposal. Most often, this is just simply because they are not aware of it or do not fully understand it. However, the number of courses being captured has already increased 100%. It is estimated there will be another significant jump as more faculty members become aware and utilize the technology. While more and more faculty members are utilizing the technology, the hope is to get all instructors who teach in lecture capture equipped rooms to use it. Surveys submitted by students have shown positive reactions to lecture capture, saying that it has aided in their understanding of the course material. If more professors choose to utilize it, that means more students can benefit. To garner attention and awareness from faculty members, training sessions are being hosted to explain what lecture capture is and how beneficial it is to the students. From this, the hope is that lecture capture recordings will be used in more and more classes,

Outlook Live is Alive and Well In June 2010, The Email Services team successfully migrated over thirty thousand student e-mail accounts to “the cloud” as part of the UMass Lowell Live@edu program hosted by Microsoft. Although student e-mail addresses are still managed by the UML Email Services team, the mailboxes are hosted offsite at a secure Microsoft data center. Perhaps the most visible new service of the UMass Lowell Live@edu program is called Outlook Live—a fully enriched e-mail client that closely resembles the desktop version of Outlook. Outlook Live offers an amazing 10 GB of e-mail storage, which is 100 times greater than the previous storage quota (100 MB) when student mailboxes were hosted on UML servers. The new user interface is a much improved version of Outlook Web Access (OWA) and is based upon Microsoft’s new flag ship product called Exchange 2010. Now, the user experience is consistent across many browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari, running on Macs, Linux, and

and subsequently readily available to significantly more students. The Lighthouse Project will leave the university highly ranked in Lecture Capture compared to other schools. With 60 fully-equipped rooms, UMass Lowell will have the most lecture capture classrooms in all colleges in New England and fairly close to having the most in all colleges in the Northeast. As an innovative campus, UMass Lowell is continually looking for ways to enhance the educational experience of students using cutting-edge technology. These lecture capture systems are

a huge part of the additions being made to upgrade and modernize classroom technology. As everyone begins to take full advantage of the technological environments within classrooms, time will show that both the instructors and the students will benefit greatly. UMass Lowell will truly become a guiding light in cutting edge instructional technology. For more on requesting Lecture Capture, which rooms are equipped with the technology, and any other information, visit http://gse.uml.edu/echo360portal/.

Process for DNS and Firewall request changes As part of the IT audits and security changes, the IT department has reworked their firewall and DNS policy. Now, requests to make changes to a firewall and assignments of new DNS, or IP addresses, will be approved twice a week. The purpose of this change is to formalize the process of authorization. When a request comes in for a firewall change or an IP address distribution, it will first be documented. Then, twice a week all the documented requests will go through an approval process and, if approved, subsequently be implemented The calls regarding firewall changes and IP address requests will still be made through the Help Center. This approval process is meant to create standardization and better security. Emergency situations will be handled as exceptions to this rule, but nonemergency requests will be processed in a standardized order to assure everything is documented and recorded appropriately.

PC-based computers. Students may appreciate a new feature called “e-mail redirection” where their email is redirected, or forwarded, to an alternate e-mail account of their choice, without losing the original sender’s name. UMass Lowell is committed to providing a first class electronic messaging system that meets the expanding needs of our students. The student’s e-mail address is extremely important since it is where important communication regarding their classes, billing, university events, emergencies, etc. will be sent. Additionally, instructors use this address as the primary point of contact to reach students. In addition to all the great new services offered by Outlook Live, the university saved over 1.5M dollars over a five year period by outsourcing email to Microsoft. This included cost savings due to software and hardware required for servers, storage, and licenses, as well as recurring maintenance costs. To find answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Outlook Live and many other services offered via UMass Lowell Live@edu, students may visit http://mail.student.uml.edu or http://help.outlook.com. IT Interface 5

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Help Center Office has been renovated! After a summer of construction, the Help Center is finally returning to its home office in Olsen 107. While many people may not have realized it, the Help Center temporarily relocated during the summer to allow for construction to be done in room 107. Now that the Help Center is back in the newly renovated office, they are up and ready to provide students, faculty, and staff members better consolidated services. Now, every key player involved with the Help Center will be centralized in one room, rather than spread out through different offices on one floor. This will help to maximize communication between those on phone support with desktop technicians and with those supporting the IT web site and PS Security. Also, with the setup we are now able to expand support when needed such as when the campus opens in the fall and spring. While most people may know the Help Center as being the place to go to for password resets, in reality they are responsible for so much more. The Help Center is there for all technology related support issues. In addition to support, campuswide software licenses are also available. That means that faculty and staff members can stop by to borrow copies of Windows 7, Microsoft Office Professional, SPSS, Mathematica, and NVIVO. Those behind running the Help Center are also behind the deployment of new computer systems, as well.

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Protecting Phones is Smart Ask anyone who has a smart phone, and they will probably reply that their phones are part of their work lives. Smart phone keeps users connected to the world; they feed users their e-mail messages instantly, allow them access to the web at any moment in time, often offer so many different useful apps, as well as storing all of a users contacts, messages, and even personal pictures. While these phones are used for both business and personal life, for so many these phones are critical to function both professionally and socially. Because of this, these phones need to stay safe and protected. One easy but effective way of protecting a phone from unwanted viewers is to password-protect the phone. If there is not a password to protect a phone, this means that if anyone ever gets a hold of someone’s phone, they have access to an array of information, especially with smart phones. With so many phones programmed to receive e-mail, if someone comes across a lost or unattended smart phone, they have access to the user’s e-mail, and any personal information within those e-mails. Also, someone can easily look around at browsing history and applications. If a user happens to do any online banking through an application or website and the password is saved on the phone, someone can get into those programs and manipulate those accounts. For that matter, with the new phones, like the Droid which has a GPS in it, someone could track where a user’s friends and family are located through applications like Latitude. If a phone is missing, the hardware itself can be replaced but the information

within the lost phone is still accessible to anyone who comes across it. While scenarios like those are frightening, there is a very simple way to prevent that occurrence: put a password on the phone. In most phones today, there will be an option to secure or passwordprotect them. Many phones will have users create a password using numbers and/or letters that must be entered every time someone attempts to use the phone. Other phones, such as the Droid, also have the option to set an unlock pattern. For an unlock pattern, users create their own pattern by connecting a series of dots on a grid. If they choose to require a pattern, users must draw out the pattern to unlock their phone. Using either a password or a pattern will help tremendously to secure a smart phone. Another good way to protect a smart phone is to, if possible, install an anti-virus application. If a user downloads a lot of apps, it may be wise to find a good anti-virus program to prevent a phone from becoming infected. Malicious applications are not terribly common; however, they do still exist. That being said, everyone must always use discretion when downloading apps for a phone. Users can always look at the reviews for different applications to see what others have said about it. If others have had problems with an application, especially if it is malicious, they do not hesitate to write an angry review about it. And just like on a regular computer, viruses can work their way into a phone through attachments or files, often from e-mails. Remember to only open files from a known and trusted sender. And if anything does not feel quite right about an e-mail, play it safe and do not download the attachment until there is a way to confirm it is safe. It is also critical to maintain up-to-date software on a phone. Often when companies notice that there is a problem with their phones, security issues included, they will send out a system update to patch the problem. Overall, updates tend to improve phone performance as a whole anyway. For users to keep their

phones running smoothly, they need to keep up with system updates. Usually, a phone will alert the user when an update is available, but it is never a bad idea to check manually through the phone’s settings every once and a while. There are some other small things users can do to prevent problems. One is to disable certain features when they are not in use, such as GPS, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth. Not only will it save battery life on a smart phone, but it is just a good safety measure to protect the phone. Also, as far as Wi-Fi goes, try not to join unknown networks. For one, it is not good practice to use a network you do not have permission to use, and secondly, the user has no way of knowing just how safe or unsafe that network is. Try to only use Wi-Fi through known networks, such as a uml-wireless network or a user’s personal one. Also, try to avoid keeping personal, sensitive data on a phone, such as social security or credit card numbers, unless they have a strong encryption program. Finally, if users are ever disposing of any smart phones, they should clear out all the information stored in their phones. It will be even easier for someone to get their hands on a phone a user has gotten rid of, and it is likely the previous user would not even be aware someone else can access their data. To prevent any unfortunate circumstances that can arise out of that, reset the phone back to factory settings, which will completely wipe the phone out of any information that has been put on it. A smart phone is more than just a phone; it is a computer, and it holds part of the user’s life within it. Just as someone would protect a computer, a phone also needs to be protected. And while the consequences for having an unprotected phone have the potential to be devastating, the steps to secure a mobile device are simple.

Tips for a Faster and More Secure Connection Some computer users at UMass Lowell may not be using the best or fastest internet connections available to them. It is all too often an occurrence that on campus users are just connecting to the first open network connection they see, when there are better options available to them. Subsequently, by connecting to the most easily accessible connection, they get a slower and more insecure connection. With these few tips, students, faculty and staff members can learn how to get the best internet connection possible on campus When it is possible, it is certainly more advantageous for users to plug into the wall jack. When students, faculty, and staff members use wireless, they go through an access point. That access point is allotted so much bandwidth. This bandwidth must be shared by every computer trying to access that access point. However, when a user at UMass Lowell connects to the wall using an Ethernet cord, they have a dedicated connection, and are guaranteed so much bandwidth, meaning that it is a considerably faster internet connection. Using wireless will almost always be slower just because so many people are trying to get a connection from the same access point, where those plugging to the wall get their own connection, and a faster connection. That being said, sometimes it is not always possible or convenient to plug into the wall. When a student, faculty, or staff member does choose to use wireless, it is important that they connect to the appropriate wireless network; for students it is uml-student, and for faculty/staff members it is uml-admin. However, it is actually very common that users are not connecting to these networks. Instead, they are connecting to the open, unsecured networks. With uml-student and umladmin, users need to configure their computer or laptop to that wireless network, and then they must also enter in their credentials to verify they are in fact a student or faculty/staff member. Many are logging into uml-

wireless instead, which does not require configuration or a username and password. The problem is that this network is intended as a guest network, and therefore has limited capabilities; a user cannot do much more than just surf the web. This means that things like instant messaging and file transfer will not work when connected to the uml-wireless network. A similar situation is present in the residence halls, with students connecting their laptops to uml-gameconsole, a wireless network designed for video game consoles. Students tapping into this network from their computers may not fully understand how much this slows down their internet connection, however, because game consoles naturally require less bandwidth than a computer does. The other issue with connecting to networks like uml-wireless and uml-game console is that they are not secure networks. Any information sent using those networks has the potential to be caught and viewed by an outsider. The two secure networks, uml-student for students and uml-admin for faculty/staff members, encrypt the data so no one can breach the data. By simply connecting to the internet through using the wall jacks, or just configuring a computer to access the proper wireless networks, everyone at UMass Lowell can assure a faster and a safer network connection.

Microsoft Upgrades Since the time Microsoft Office 2003 (MS Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc) came onto the market, two more versions of Office have been released, 2007 and 2010. Despite this, there still are many employees at UMass Lowell still using the now seven-year-old version of office. To remedy this fact, an upgrade campaign for Microsoft Office is currently underway. The goal of this program is to upgrade the entire campus to Microsoft Office Professional 2007, or MS Office Professional 2008 for Macs, and eventually 2010 once it is released to the UMass Lowell Campus. As part of this process, all new computers that have been ordered for faculty and staff members have MS Office Professional 2007 fully installed along with Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 7. Also, copies of Office 2007 installation CD’s are available at the Help Center for faculty/staff members to borrow to install on their existing computers. As soon as Office 2010 is deployed to the Help Center, the same will apply to that version. Faculty/Staff members will be able to receive it on loan from the Help Center, and everyone who has not upgraded their system will continually be encouraged to upgrade until everyone on campus has either Office 2007 or 2010. Also, once 2010 is available, new computers will be equipped with that version.

Comings and Goings—Fall 2010 In this edition of the IT Interface Newsletter, we would like to welcome three recently-hired employees to the IT department. Nick Siakatos-Nick has joined IT as an Enterprise Systems Administrator, supporting mission-critical applications and servers supported by Enterprise Systems Services. He is a graduate of UMass Lowell, and has been a presence in the IT department since 2004. Dan Ferry is the new desktop support technician working for Information Technology. Dan supports all hardware and software tickets called into the Help Center. He is a graduate of UMass Lowell and has been working as a desktop technician for the past 6 years. Dan Bedard is the project manager for the Document Imaging project. He is a certified project management professional, and joins us with extensive experience working on software implementation.

For the latest IT information visit us at http://www.uml.edu/it

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