Brackett Library Wants To Serve You

Brackett Library has been busy since the beginning of the semester.  The Library has been open 82 days this semester and has had 123,690 visits to the library, on top of the 66,290 visits to the Library web home page.

Our eight librarians, seven staff members and forty student workers have all taken the time to be prepared and enjoy serving you and our students.  The following is just a small list of ways that we can assist both faculty and students:

• Recommend a Book – This link can be found on the right hand side of the library home page.  If there is an item that you think the library should consider purchasing, just fill out the information for us.

• Research Help – There is a librarian or trained staff (our Information Assistant) available for you 74 hours a week.  (The library is open 84 hours a week so librarians are happy to schedule a time to meet with you if needed).

• Study Space – The library is a place where you can settle in for some study time.  Downstairs provides a space to work in small groups while upstairs is for those who like it a little quieter.

• Suggestion Box – A link can be found down on the right hand corner of the library home page.  Your input matters!

What’s next?  We are already thinking ahead to one of our busiest times – Dead week and Finals Week!  And what are we thinking? Some possibilities are extended hours, late night snacks, and bringing therapy dogs to the library to help relieve a little bit of the stress!  

Necessary Security Updates and Downtime

Hello

A number of security vulnerability warnings have been issued recently. Usually the patches and fixes for these warnings can be implemented without any significant or noticeable downtime. 

However, there are some current security issues that need more immediate attention and will require downtime. The two most significant issues we must deal with are related to a vulnerability to our Oracle databases (POODLE) and security certificates which Google Chrome will flag as insecure starting sometime in November. Some updates will also be performed at the same time.

We will be working on correcting these issues on Saturday, October 25, 2014 from 7.00am to 7.00pm. A number of our services will not be available during this time.

The services that will NOT be available are: 

• The Oracle databases (all of them, including Banner)
• Pipeline
• Banner Forms
• Testing Lab Scheduler
• Argos
• Famis
• Appworx

Services that WILL be available are:

• Internet
• Email (use https://connect.harding.edu, not the Pipeline icon)
• M-drives and other shares
• Echo360
• Canvas (use the direct link - https://harding.instructure.com)

Thank you in anticipation for your understanding as these issues are addressed.

Be sure to thank our Systems and Database Administration team for taking care of this. Who are they? Glad you asked. 

   

Jon WryeLyn BlansettPeter KirbyEric Bond

The 2014 Faculty Technology Showcase - September 25

The Center for Learning with Technology invites you to the fall Faculty Technology Showcase presented for teachers, by teachers. 

The 2014 Faculty Technology Showcase will unlock your classroom potential by exploring what fellow faculty are doing with technology in their courses, both online and face-to-face settings. Don't miss the poster style session format and the opportunity to start a conversation with faculty presenters about their creative uses of information and communication technologies in the classroom.

Event Date and Time: 

Today, 2014, 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM (Come early to the faculty meeting and visit with faculty presenters as they share their experiences with technology integration and learning.)

Location: 

Regions Room, American Heritage (2nd floor)

Attend for a chance to win a year subscription to Amazon Prime. Our first 50 attendees will also receive door prizes. 

Presenters:

• Echo360 - Travis McNeal
• Quality Matters Online Course Design - Chris Davis
• The Flipped Classroom & Pearson Labs - Lisa Ritchie
• Wii Remote - Dennis Matlock
• Camtasia - Steve Warren
• Canvas Rubrics and SpeedGrader - Keith Cronk
• Respondus 4.0 - Anessa Westbrook
• Ebeam and Collaborative Studio - Amy Cox
• Cross-Discipline Teaching - Daniel Adams
• Padlet and Socrative - Bruce Bryant
• Google Docs Collaborations - Bob Ritchie 
• Collaborative Classroom - Crystal Whittington & Rebecca Teague
• Powtoons (animated movies) - Paul Swann
• Social Media - Katie Ramirez
• Voicethread (University Site License) - Connie Shay

Hackers post millions of stolen Gmail passwords on Russian site - Are Harding's passwords safe?

No doubt many of us have seen a headline over the last few days about stolen Gmail passwords appearing on a Russian website. If you haven't you can read some news about it here: Hackers post millions of stolen Gmail passwords on Russian site.

As you know Harding uses Google as our email service. So are our passwords safe?

There is an article in this weeks issue of Computerworld that talks about the issue in general: What you need to know about the Gmail Password Compromise.

More specifically in regard to Harding passwords, John Nunnally advises the following:

"The Russians are releasing the data they have a little bit at a time to keep the story "hot", if for no other reason.  Four days ago they released these five million or so gmail accounts and their passwords.  ...Google is aware of no security breach that allowed this information to be accessed.  They believe these five million accounts were compromised by phishing schemes and malware that does keyboard logging, etc.  In other words, these gmail owners effectively gave away their account information.

Harding.edu accounts are not gmail.com accounts even though Google hosts our harding.edu accounts. So I seriously doubt this list of five million gmail accounts includes any harding.edu accounts.  But that does not mean these Russians do not have some harding.edu accounts in the billion or so account credentials they collected.  I spend a lot of time dealing with Harding accounts that have been compromised, so certainly a number of our Harding users give their credentials away just like these gmail account owners did.

Our conclusion at the time of the original August report was that most of the data was so old that it was of little consequence to most of us. Harding requires regular password changes which all but guarantees that any "old" passwords have been aged out already.  But of course if anyone is ever concerned, they are encouraged to go to password.harding.edu and change their password. They certainly do not have to wait until they receive expiration notices.

As a matter of record -- Anyone with accounts anywhere with passwords over a year old should change them immediately.  Once a year is certainly not too often these days. Hackers do not want you to know that they have your password.  So usually the only way you find out you have been hacked is when you realize your account has been abused. The primary defense we have is to change our passwords regularly in hopes that, if we are hacked, we will have changed our password before the bad guys get around to using it."

Ideas for safe computing

Hey folks.

It’s the beginning of the new school year and we have a new crop of employees that haven’t heard the speech about safe computing. It doesn’t hurt the rest of us to be reminded either. If you watch the news at all you know what a mine field it can be.

The IT department does what it can to protect your data, including FERPA protected student information. We've invested in anti-virus software, encryption software for laptops, encrypted wireless, servers and software to install updates, and a backup system that keeps multiple copies of school data. One copy is even out of state!

Still much of the responsibility falls to you. Here is a brief list of things you can do:

1. Passwords:
1. Choose a strong one with a few numbers mixed in. The password changing page will help you know if the password you are choosing is strong.
2. Never use your Harding password for other sites (online shopping accounts, other e-mail accounts, banking, etc)
3. Don’t write it down
4. Don’t give it away. If you get an e-mail message asking you to verify your user name, e-mail settings, etc. it will not be from us!
2. Phishing: Don’t click links in e-mail messages. Even if it looks like it’s from us. We may send a message saying “go to Pipeline and change your password” but we won’t send you a link.
3. Data: Make sure all of your important files are stored somewhere besides your computer. My suggestion is to store them on your M: drive or your Google drive. Hard drives do fail. We replace several each month. That conversation is sad for those who haven’t backed up their data.
4. Secure wireless: Not only is it secure, but it’s been allocated more bandwidth that the guest wireless.
5. Physical security: Close your office when you aren’t there. Also, a screen saver with a password helps cover you when you forget.

Along these lines we will be introducing a new product named Languard this semester. It is similar to the update product that we have been using except that it will update more than just Microsoft products. We will send more information when the time comes.

Feel free to contact us with your questions and suggestions. We are here to help!

Introducing the IS&T News Blog - The Hyperlink

Hello

Greetings from all in Information Systems & Technology (IS&T). We are pleased to introduce you to our news blog. This blog will replace our newsletter. We want to be able to send you information items and general interest stories using this blog. We will have more frequent, but less 'wordy' updates about what is happening in IS&T. We will let you know when there is a new post, or you can subscribe to the blog and receive an automatic notification of new posts and comments.

Many readers of this blog will have been off campus over the summer. People have been out and about literally all over the world! But some also stay here on campus and work away through the heat of the summer - well the mild heat of this summer so far. This includes many in IS&T.

So what are some of the things that people in IS&T have been up to over the summer?

To get an idea, and to meet some of the people in IS&T please take some time to view this video - it is about 16 minutes long, but worth viewing, all at once or maybe 2x8min sessions. However you watch it, we hope you enjoy it and find it helpful in some way.

IS&T People and Some Summer Activities Video