Technology News

Barracuda Spam Tool Update
Password Policy
Computer Purchase Program for Faculty, Staff and Students
New Student Email System
OIT Welcomes New Employees
Dell Laptop Battery Recall
New Process for New Employee Network/Telephone Access
Let's All Do Our Part in Conserving Energy
Network Maintenance
Spring Cleaning
What is Acceptable Use of Technology?
OIT Reorganization
OIT Help Desk – Expanded Hours of Service
SUS SERVICES
IT Requests - Plan Ahead!
Network What?!?…..Network Drives
Managing Internet latency - Internet bandwidth consumption
IT Planning Suggestions
Access Your Email From Home
Adjunct Faculty Email
OIT Update - Protecting E-Mail from Viruses
Fall Cleaning

Barracuda Spam Tool Update
In November, we transitioned from Postini, a hosted spam service, to the Barracuda Spam Firewall, which is a device that is installed locally on campus. The primary reason for this transition was the ability to provide all mailboxes, including adjunct email accounts, with spam filtering capabilities.  On a monthly basis, this device is delivering approximately 8-10% of all the mail sent to the College to your mailboxes and blocking the remaining 90% of the mail sent to the College.  This translates to blocking over 1,000,000 mail messages monthly. These numbers are reflective of the overall increase, estimated at as much of an 80%, in spam messages sent via the Internet beginning in October.

As we continue the transition to the Barracuda, its effectiveness is enhanced by each user “black listing” the spam messages in their quarantine. To learn more about this feature and other Barracuda features, we welcome your participation in the OIT Technology Education Series class “Using the Barracuda to Filter Your Spam” offered on April 17from 2 – 4 p.m. To register for this class, please contact the OIT Help Desk at ext. 4900.

Password Policy
As you know, Camden County College is committed to maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of social security numbers for all of our constituents. A number of policies and initiatives have been recently implemented assuring that the privacy of such institutional data will be better secured. One such policy that has been developed by the College’s Information Technology Planning Group (ITPG) and approved by the President’s Cabinet is a network and administrative systems password policy. (See Attached Policy).  

Highlights of the password policy include the following:

-All network and e-mail passwords must be changed every 180 days.

- All passwords must conform to the guidelines described below:

-Passwords must be a minimum of 8 characters in length and contain at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, and one numeric character.

-Passwords should not include any words from a spelling dictionary.

-Passwords cannot be the same as the user’s ID or contain a proper name.

-A password cannot be the same as the past 3 passwords.

-Accounts will be locked after three failed attempts for the duration of 15 minutes.

-Passwords should not be shared with anyone, written down, or posted on a computer or monitor.

-Users calling the Help Desk for password resets will be asked to verify their identity.  The following information will be required for verification:

-College Personnel – Birthdate (month, date, year), last four digits of SSN, and employee ID  Number

-Non-College Personnel – Required to present valid photo ID, in person only.

These guidelines will be implemented beginning February 5, 2007. During this week, faculty and staff will receive a message that their password has expired and be required to set a new password using the new password guidelines. We intend to expire 100 accounts per day, so that this process will continue into the following week. This password reset process will need to occur on a faculty/staff computer at the College. 

Please note that adjunct faculty e-mail account passwords (OWA) will not expire, however, when changing their password, they will need to follow the complex password standards.

We appreciate your cooperation with this new policy and assisting in safeguarding the College’s institutional data. 

Thank you.

Jane-Ellen Miller, Co-Chair, Information Technology Planning Group
Charles VanMater, Co-Chair, Information Technology Planning Group

Computer Purchase Program for Faculty, Staff and Students
Computer purchase programs are currently available for faculty, staff and students through both Dell Corporation and Apple Computers. Dell offers a 12% discount, while Apple offers a 10% discount on their products. Links to these purchase programs are provided on the College’s Web sites under “For Faculty and Staff” and “Current Students” links. Happy shopping:)

New Student Email System
This fall, Camden County College is transitioning the student email system from the Microsoft Outlook Web client to a Windows Live Mail account.  Windows Live Mail is a newer, enhanced version of Microsoft’s Hot Mail that provides students with a web based email client, 2GB of storage space, and an email account for life!

We anticipate Windows Live Mail to be made fully available by Microsoft this fall. While Microsoft is readying its Windows Live Mail environment, students will be provided a Microsoft Hot Mail account with 250MB of storage space.

Student email addresses will follow the format of:

firstname.lastname@students.camdencc.edu
Example: jane.smith@students.camdencc.edu

Information regarding the new student email system can be found on line at http://www.camdencc.edu/oit/studentemailnew.htm.  Students can contact the Student Technology Help Desk at 1-866-226-3367 for assistance.

Faculty and staff who would like to send a student email can obtain a student’s email addresses from Colleague or Web Advisor. 

OIT Welcomes New Employees
Please join us in welcoming Ryan Clark and Don McCrea to the Office of Information Technology.  Ryan Clark is our new Help Desk Specialist and the person who staffs the OIT Help Desk.   Don McCrea is our part-time Technical Support Specialist who staffs the OIT Help Desk in the evening and provides evening technical support at the Blackwood campus.  Stop by Truman Hall and say hello ;)

Dell Laptop Battery Recall
As you have seen in the news, Dell has recently recalled batteries from several of their notebook computers (See Attached Safety Advisory).  Dell has provided OIT with a list of those notebook computers that are potentially affected by this recall.  In turn, OIT has contacted the college staff that are currently issued the equipment and is coordinating the battery replacement with Dell.  If you have not been contacted by OIT, your Dell notebook computer is probably not impacted by this recall.   You can verify that your notebook computer battery is not affected by this recall by following the directions in the attached advisory.  Please contact the OIT Help Desk, ext. 4900 if you have further questions regarding this matter.

New Process for New Employee Network/Telephone Access
Beginning May 1, 2006, the Office of Information Technology, in conjunction with Human Resources department, will begin a new process for requesting network and telephone access for new employees. This new process will be initiated by the Human Resource department once an employee is hired. A newly revised Network/Telephone Access form (see attached) will be completed by the Human Resources department with input from the new employee’s supervisor. The form will then be faxed to OIT so that the network accounts and telephone access can be configured. 

Requests for Datatel Colleague or SunGard Bi-Tech access will continue to be handled through a separate account request form initiated by the supervisor. These forms can be found in the OIT folder on the S drive.

This new process is being implemented for “permanent/continuing” employees. Requests for access for temporary employees will continue to be handled by the supervisor completing a “Temporary Employee –Network/Telephone Access” form found in the OIT folder on the S drive. 

We are hopeful that this new process will expedite access to technology resources for new faculty and staff.

To the College Community: 

There are several energy and money saving opportunities in our workplace.  Studies show that technology equipment has a significant impact on energy consumption.  Beginning immediately, please turn off your desktop computer and any other office equipment before leaving for the day.  This practice costs nothing and can save as much as $44 per year, per computer.  Camden County College has more than 2,000 computers, so the savings can be significant.

As a reminder, Windows Update Services are enabled on your desktop system. This service is used to keep your computer’s Operating System and Office applications up to date. These updates are critical to the security, stability, and reliability of your system and the College’s network environment.  OIT made some minor changes to the Windows Update Service so that the notices and reboots support the College’s energy saving initiatives.

For sometime now, you may have seen messages from Windows Updates about the installation of updates and/or that the updates are finished installing and the system requires a reboot. If you receive a message that the installation of Windows Updates have completed and that a reboot is required, you can choose to delay the restart until later. The required restart will now occur when you Shutdown your computer each the night.

Starting tomorrow, at 4:00pm, you will see a pop-up box that reminds you to turn off (shut-down) your computer each night.  Just click the OK box and continue with whatever you are working on, until you are ready to shut down for the night.  If you have any questions, please call extension 4900.

Over the summer, OIT will work on a strategy for shutting down all classroom computers at night.  I’ll keep you posted on our progress. 

Network Maintenance
Due to the increased number of servers and the frequent releases of security software patches, it has become necessary for OIT to establish a re-occurring weekly maintenance window.

Beginning this month, maintenance will be scheduled every Wednesday night from 10 p.m. – 2:00 a.m. that will temporarily impact network services. Examples of the tasks that require this ‘down time’ include installing new life cycle network switch gear, routers, server hardware and/or upgrades; installing Microsoft security patches on Windows servers; and modifications to application, service, email, printing and security configurations.

You will be notified by OIT on a weekly basis, if the scheduled maintenance tasks will impact our 24x7 services including the college’s main web site, Web Advisor, or email.

Re-print from E-Newsletter - March 23, 2006

Spring Cleaning
The OIT staff would like to remind you that your Spring cleaning chores don’t end with yard work and wardrobe adjustments; this is a great time to do some housekeeping with your emails, files, and folders storage.

First, we remind everyone that your Outlook mailbox needs regular maintenance. You should delete emails that you don’t want, or need, delete items from your Sent Items folder and delete out of date contacts from your contacts folder. Remember to “empty” your deleted items folder as a last step in this process. Also, perform the same cleaning in your personal folders. If you find mail items that you wish to keep please move them from your Outlook today mailbox to a personal folder. If you have questions regarding maintaining your mailbox please contact Help Desk @ ext. 4900. In addition, our Technology Education series will be featuring Outlook on March 31.

Please take a few minutes to review the content of your department’s G: drive and your own H: drive. Remove any data files that are no longer in use. Simply delete them (remember to empty your recycle bin when you are finished).

OIT also reminds you that data content stored on the network is backed up for a period of two weeks, any changes to your data older then this are not necessarily available should you accidentally delete it. Therefore, it is important to remember to save your most important data regularly and even make your own copy to removable media.

Thank you and enjoy your spring!

Re-print from E-Newsletter - March 23, 2006

What is Acceptable Use of Technology?
“Camden County College’s policy governing Acceptable Use of Technology attempts to balance the freedoms needed for legal, ethical and efficient use of shared resources”, as stated in the Guide to Acceptable Use of Technology policy document. Additionally outlined in this policy, is a set of guidelines that speaks to appropriate use of technology resources. This document can be referenced at http://www.camdencc.edu/oit/policies.htm.

Inappropriate use of technology resources includes such activities as downloading music for non-academic or personal use. Although a subscription music service is not violating the digital copyright laws, use of a college computer and its internet resources for personal use is prohibited. This type of activity does have an impact on our bandwidth utilization and negatively effects internet response time in the academic areas of the college.

Questions regarding appropriate use of technology can be directed to the OIT Help Desk, ext 4900, Susan Bowen or Jane-Ellen Miller.

Re-print from E-Newsletter - February 9, 2006

OIT Reorganization
The Office of Information Technology is pleased to announce the reorganization of its User Services area. This reorganization has been designed to better meet the evolving technology needs of our user community and mirrors the traditional organizational structure found in higher education IT environments. The User Services area has been reorganized to include the areas of Help Desk, Desktop Computing, Technology Training, Classroom Computer Lab and Blackwood Open Access Lab management and support. 

Walt George has been promoted to the newly created position of Manager of User Services and will be spearheading the efforts of this area. Manda Patil has been promoted to Lab Manager for the Blackwood Open Access Lab and Tom Maloney has been promoted to a second level Technical Support Specialist. 

The procedure for requesting assistance regarding a technology-related issue continues to be to contact the OIT Help Desk, ext. 4900 or email OIT Dept. The OIT User Services staff is ready and willing to assist you!

Re-print from E-Newsletter - January 26, 2006

OIT Help Desk – Expanded Hours of Service
The Office of Information Technology is pleased to announce extended operational hours for the Help Desk. Beginning Monday, September 9th, the OIT Help Desk will be staffed Monday thru Thursday from 8:30am – 8:00pm and Friday from 8:30am – 4:30pm. We hope this evening support is especially helpful for faculty utilizing classroom computer labs or those using technology in a classroom. You can contact the Help Desk at ext. 4900 or by emailing oitdept@camdencc.edu.

SUS SERVICES
OIT will be deploying Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS) beginning Tuesday, July 27. This new service will provide a means to distribute Microsoft operating system software updates and patches to each workstation on the campus network. This service will assist us in minimizing security vulnerabilities in the software and maintaining stability in our production environment.

On a daily basis, your computer will check the SUS server for critical patches. If patches are required, they will be downloaded to your computer automatically. You may be prompted via a "balloon" (message by system clock) or pop-up message regarding installation of new patches. Follow the wizard for installation instruction. Depending on the type of patch, you may be prompted for a system reboot.

Please direct any questions regarding the Microsoft SUS service to the Help Desk, ext. 4900.

Entered September 24, 2004

IT Requests - Plan Ahead!
The Office of Information Technology Help Desk is responsible for receiving all questions or requests for information technology services for faculty and staff. This includes computer hardware and software, email, computer classroom labs, administrative systems, technology education, telephones and voice mail system.

To assist OIT in our planning efforts, the following timeframes are suggested for requests:

Requests for the installation of new equipment (computer, printer and telephone) or software should be received 2 weeks prior to when the technology is needed.

2. Request for network and telephone access for new employees should be received 2 weeks prior to the new staff persons start date.

Requests for a move or change to existing equipment (computer and telephone) should be received 2 weeks prior to when it is needed.

Requests for network access (jack activation) should be received 2 weeks prior to when the connectivity is required.

Requests for the installation or modification of a curricular software program, used in a computer classroom lab or open access lab, should be received two months prior to the start of the semester it is needed. OIT contacts all department chairs and program coordinators at this time to ascertain this list.

It is most helpful to us that these requests come directly to the OIT Help Desk, ext 4900 or oitdept@camdencc.edu, rather than an individual OIT staff member.

Re-print from E-Newsletter 9/9/04

Network What?!?…..Network Drives
The Camden County College network offers many different tools for you to use. Network drives provide you with options to store your information or data. These drives can be found under My Computer. There are currently four different network drives at your disposal. They are G: for Group (departmental), H: for Home, S: for Campus_ Share, and T: for shared applications. The following definitions reflect what can be found on these drives.

The G: or Group drive, is a department specific drive that enables your department to share and access information. This drive is helpful when you or a member of your department wants to share or post something particular to the department.The H: or Home drive is a personal network drive accessible only under your user login. This drive can be used to store your personal documents and to backup data that is stored on your local “C” drive. The benefit to using the H drive is that you can access your files from any computer within the college, since they are stored on the network.

S: or Campus_Share drive allows a user to create a folder to store and share documents and forms that other users need to access campus wide. This drive should not be used to store personal or confidential documents, since others will be able to access it. Presently, a sub-committee from ITGP is discussing the restructuring of this space to allow users to more easily find and access college-wide information.T: or Apps drive houses shared applications such as MS Office, Datatel, U.I., Message Manager, Visio, etc. The program applications within this drive are running when users login, given their profile and number of site licenses for the software allowed. This drive does not allow users to add or install software to this network drive or store their documents.

Questions regarding your network storage space can be directed to the Help Desk, ext. 4900.

Re-print From E-Newsletter 5/14/03

Managing Internet latency - Internet bandwidth consumption
Over the past few years, the college allocated significant resources strengthening the college network to provide everyone access to various applications, only to have the lowly MP3 file nearly bring the network to its knees.

In order to ensure optimal use of our network and Internet bandwidth (network and internet traffic) and to limit security risks related to the installation and use of unauthorized software, please remember that the college network is for teaching and learning and appropriate office use only. (Refer to the “Guide for Acceptable Use of Technology” updated fall 2002.) Bandwidth is a commodity, and we want it to be available when it is needed. When the college’s Internet access is used for personal reasons, such as downloading music for non-teaching purposes, the entire college is affected by a slower running system and less space allocated to do required tasks.

OIT is looking at ways to overcome application performance issues, while providing an expedient solution to network congestion. Network bandwidth consumption is growing due to increasing traffic and user volume as well as transaction sizes.

Where do we go from here, how do we make sure resources are available for everyone when they need them? If money were no object, we could throw enough at this problem and have the biggest pipes on the market. Or we may look at various technologies to assist us in managing network traffic.

There are application-intelligent traffic management systems that assign priority and bandwidth amounts. We do not want to affect teaching and learning or decide who needs to access what resources. We do however; want to make sure that computer classrooms have priority, and that college applications used by employees to conduct college business have priority. We will not infringe on academic freedom or negatively impact legitimate use of any services, but we do want to ensure quality of service (QoS). With everyone managing how they use college network resources we can get in front of some of our network latency issues. If that is not enough, then with appropriate software we can allow required protocols through and allocate bandwidth/priority to the appropriate applications.

Re-print from E-Newsletter 1/29/03

IT Planning Suggestions
The Office of Information Technology Help Desk is responsible for receiving all questions or requests for information technology services for faculty and staff. This includes computer hardware and software, email, computer classroom labs, administrative systems, technology education, telephones and voice mail system.

To assist OIT in our planning efforts, the following timeframes are suggested for requests:

1. Requests for the installation of new equipment (computer, printer and telephone) or software should be received 2 weeks prior to when the technology is needed.
2. Requests for a move or change to existing equipment (computer and telephone) should be received 2 weeks prior to when it is needed.
3. Requests for network access (jack activation) should be received 2 weeks prior to when the connectivity is required.
4. Requests for the installation or modification of a curricular software program, used in a computer classroom lab, should be received two months prior to the start of the semester it is needed. OIT contacts all department chairs and program coordinators at this time to ascertain this list.

It is most helpful to us that these requests come directly to the OIT Help Desk, ext 4900 or oitdept@camdencc.edu, rather than an individual OIT staff member.

Re-print From E-Newsletter 1/15/03

5) Access Your Email From Home
Over the past few weeks the OIT Help Desk has received a few questions regarding access to email from home. Camden County College has adopted Outlook Web Access as the official means of doing this for full time faculty and staff. Outlook Web Access can be reached by typing owa.camdencc.edu in the address field of Internet Explorer or by selecting the Outlook Email link in the Faculty and Staff section of the College web site. By adopting Outlook Web Access as the default mail client, faculty and staff have a multitude of new features and accessibility to their email then ever before with standard mail clients like Netscape. Some new features include the ability to view and modify your personal calendar, an online task list, a global College directory of email address, a single personal address book accessible from home or office (no need to synchronize), and access to Exchange public folders. Since the new system is web-based, it is easier for you to get your mail then ever before. There are no settings required on your machine. Simply type owa.camdencc.edu from your home PC, office PC, any PC on campus or around the world (provided they have internet access) to retrieve you mail. If anyone needs assistance in using Outlook Web Access please call our Help Desk at extension 4900.

6) Adjunct Faculty Email
To contact an adjunct faculty through email, your email needs to be addressed to: Facultyname@owa.camdencc.edu. The faculty name will follow the email format of first initial of their first name and full last name.

New adjunct faculty will be receiving their email accounts in early October. This information will be distributed to the adjunct faculty from their Deans, Department and Program Chairs.

Please contact the OIT Help Desk at ext. 4900 for further information.

Re-print from E-Newsletter 9/25/02

7) OIT Update - Protecting E-Mail from Viruses
Typically the college receives 500-1000 emails containing viruses per month. So far this month we have received over 4000, which in not uncharacteristic. This type of activity occurs when new variants of viruses are written. This month the college received emails from 2 new viruses. Since the most common way for a virus to procreate is though email, the college has a special version of Norton Anti-Virus specifically written for Exchange Servers (our mail server) to protect our mail. This software automatically scans all inbound and outbound mail for potential viruses. If Norton finds a virus, it will automatically remove it from your mail. Norton also alerts you that the original mail contained a virus and it was removed. Norton also notifies the sender of the virus to make them aware that they are infected and OIT network staff. This process keeps OIT staff abreast of the potential virus threat constantly. Norton is automatically updated every 3 days to prevent a new virus from slipping into the campus.

If you have received a notification that Norton has found a virus in your email that is a good thing. That means that the software has protected your computer and your files from the virus. Sometimes you may receive several notifications regarding the same virus. Viruses typically use the victim's address book to send itself to more victims. Depending on how the viruses are written it could continue to send itself out every so often to stay healthy. This will occur exponentially until everyone on the Internet updates their anti-virus programs to fully eradicate the virus. Unfortunately, OIT cannot prevent you from receiving multiple emails of a virus threat. If anyone has any questions or concerns regarding viruses please do not hesitate to call our help desk at extension 4900.

10) Fall Cleaning
Fall Cleaning! Your Computer Files Too!
The OIT staff would like to remind you that your Fall cleaning chores don’t end with yard work and wardrobe adjustments; this is a great time to do some housekeeping with your file and folder storage. Please take a few minutes to review the content of your department’s G: drive and your own H: drive. Remove any data files that are no longer in use. You can copy them to floppy or zip disk if you would like to save them long term or simply delete them (remember to empty your recycle bin when you are finished). OIT would also remind you that data content stored on the network is backed up for a period of two weeks, any changes to your data older then this is not necessarily available should you accidentally delete it. Therefore, it is important to remember to save your most important data regularly and even make your own copy to removable media.