ITS Communications Archive | Information Technology Services | University of Connecticut

ITS Communications Archive | Information Technology Services | University of Connecticut
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(also called
HTTP cookies
browser cookies
, or simply
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Can persist across sessions if you select "Remember me"
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Typically, it contains:
unique session ID
(not your actual password)
Optional metadata (e.g., expiration time, security flags)
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are cookies used to
collect data about how visitors interact with a website
. Their primary purpose is to help website owners understand and improve user experience by analyzing things like:
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Which pages are most/least visited
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What device, browser, or location the user is from
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Some examples of data analytics cookies may collect:
Page views and time spent on pages
Click paths (how users move from page to page)
Bounce rate (users who leave without interacting)
User demographics (location, language, device)
Referring websites (how users arrived at the site)
Here’s how you can disable cookies in common browsers:
1. Google Chrome
Open Chrome and click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner.
Go to
Settings
Privacy and security
Cookies and other site data
Choose your preferred option:
Block all cookies
(not recommended, can break most websites).
Block third-party cookies
(can block ads and tracking cookies).
2. Mozilla Firefox
Open Firefox and click the three horizontal lines in the top-right corner.
Go to
Settings
Privacy & Security
Under the
Enhanced Tracking Protection
section, choose
Strict
to block most cookies or
Custom
to manually choose which cookies to block.
3. Safari
Open Safari and click
Safari
in the top-left corner of the screen.
Go to
Preferences
Check
Block all cookies
to stop all cookies, or select options to block third-party cookies.
4. Microsoft Edge
Open Edge and click the three horizontal dots in the top-right corner.
Go to
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Cookies and site permissions
Select your cookie settings from there, including blocking all cookies or blocking third-party cookies.
5. On Mobile (iOS/Android)
For Safari on iOS: Go to
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Block All Cookies
For Chrome on Android: Open the app, tap the three dots, go to
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Privacy and security
Be Aware:
Disabling cookies can make your online experience more difficult. Some websites may not load properly, or you may be logged out frequently. Also, certain features may not work as expected.
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ITS Communications Archive
On April 24, 2026, the updated
Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act
goes into effect for state and local governments, including public universities.
Under the federal rule, all course content, websites, and university digital content must meet updated accessibility requirements. Specifically, any existing digital content still in use by the University must be accessible by the deadline while content created on or after April 24, 2024, must be accessible at launch.
UConn has made many strategic changes to facilitate compliance since the updated rule was announced two years ago. The University has software, Siteimprove and Blackboard Ally, to help site administrators identify inaccessible web content. The themes in Aurora have built-in accessibility features and notifications. UConn’s IT accessibility coordinator offers
live workshops
self-paced learning
, document remediation,
and
resources
While we have made significant progress towards meeting the requirements, we know more work needs to be done now and in the future. If you have content online – web pages, PDFs, Word docs, etc. – that does not meet accessibility standards, please take action. Attend a training, view online resources, or contact the ITS Accessibility team at
ITAccessibility@uconn.edu
ITS and the Information Security Office are in the process of reviewing and updating IT policies posted at policy.uconn.edu.
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UConn now has an official e-signature software solution for University schools and departments.
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ITS has started the multi-year project to modernize identity and access management (IAM) at UConn.  This project involves three major changes: evolution of identity data, implementation of SailPoint for access management, and a transition to Microsoft Entra for authentication.  When completed, the University will have a more robust, secure IAM system that will improve performance and reliability for application owners and end users.
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UConn and UConn Health maintain separate Microsoft 365 environments, which means accounts, data, security, and compliance are managed independently. As a result, users from one environment are treated as external guests in the other and consequently, have limited access to resources and features.
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ITS is enhancing the security of our email environment. On Friday, January 9th, ITS will deploy Abnormal AI Email Security, which will complement our existing Microsoft 365 protections and further reduce email-based risk.
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Similar to the push to address outdated Windows 10 operating systems, ITS will begin to notify owners of computers running an outdated version of Windows 11.
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ITS has started the process of closing OneDrive accounts that no longer have an owner.
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Institutional data should be stored on UConn-supported infrastructure, which includes the Microsoft 365 environment.
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Microsoft Windows 10 will be end-of-life October 14, 2025. Because these devices will no longer receive security updates, feature updates, or technical assistance after this date, they will be vulnerable to any newly discovered security threats and therefore, may have their network administratively disconnected as a protective measure.
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ITS and Facilities Operations have implemented a new solution for maintenance service requests. The tool, ReADY, streamlines and tracks communication among Facilities departments, field technicians, and reporters, ensuring transparency and faster resolution of service requests.
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On September 2nd, ITS is making a change to SharePoint intended to reduce the number of inactive sites over time.
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On August 21st, ITS will implement two updates to the NetID password recovery process to facilitate self-service and enhance security.
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GPT-5, OpenAI’s latest and most advanced language model, is now available for UConn users who have purchased a license for ChatGPT or Microsoft 365 Copilot.  It’s coming in a few weeks for Microsoft Copilot chat, the free version that’s available to everyone at UConn with a Microsoft 365 account.
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ChatGPT licenses are now available to UConn faculty and staff through Information Technology Services (ITS). Through an official agreement with OpenAI, the organization that developed ChatGPT, the license ensures secure and compliant use of university data within the ChatGPT environment.
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ITS is announcing recent advances to Aurora, the University’s WordPress-powered web content management system. The Web Development team has introduced a new block editor and in conjunction with it, theme for new accounts.
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Access to data and analytics for decision-making is a strategic institutional priority.  The challenge is how to best govern, secure, and leverage this important asset in a way that positively impacts students, faculty, and staff.
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The Windows 10 operating system (OS) will be out of support starting October 14, 2025. Microsoft will stop providing updates, support, or security fixes for devices running the legacy OS, and the devices will be vulnerable to security threats.
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Our UConn community has two AI technologies available to them through the University’s Microsoft license: Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
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ITS, in collaboration with University Communications, has designed and developed an updated NetID Single Sign On (SSO) page.
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We want to bring an ongoing phishing scam to your attention.
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The University uses Anthology’s Blackboard Learn for our HuskyCT learning management system (LMS).
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ITS has completed the migration from Google to Microsoft 365.
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We previously recommended that faculty, staff, and students forward any email that they suspected was a phishing scam to reportphishing@uconn.edu.
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NetID SSO provides secure authentication to many of the University’s web applications.
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The UPrint program was originally developed by University Business Services’ Purchasing Department to replace the high number of small, cost ineffective printers at UConn with fewer large, multi-function, high duty cycle printers.
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ITS sends out message to our IT Contacts list. This list is made up of two distribution groups – IT Professionals and IT Stakeholders.
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A WiFi access point is a device representing the network side of the wireless connection to your device.
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ITS is implementing the student success solution from Technolutions’ Slate.
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Since the start of the academic year, we have seen issues with Single Sign On (NetID) and with network connectivity in general.
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The university has policies that govern how data should be stored, accessed, or transmitted on university technology securely and that state our responsibility to protect it.
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UConn faculty, staff, and students may purchase IT products for personal use at discounted prices.
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UConn Audit and Management Advisory Services (AMAS) recently completed a review of our Microsoft 365 tenant.
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Two artificial intelligence (AI) services are available to UConn employees.
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Forgotten passwords must be reset.
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The University has added new Adobe offerings to software.uconn.edu.
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ITS has been progressively transferring clients off Google.
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Through our enterprise Microsoft 365 license, University employees have access to libraries of training content in Viva Learning.
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ITS has expanded its laptop program to improve data security for foreign travel.
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2FA adds a second layer of protection to the login process.
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Previously, University email addresses followed the format of firstname.lastname@uconn.edu.
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DR is a critical IT operational capability designed to quickly restore and then deliver key services from an alternate location should there be a catastrophic loss of our production facilities in Storrs.
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DA enables remote Windows workstations to access the UConn network without traditional VPN connections.
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Kuali Financials is a comprehensive software suite from KualiCo that serves as the University’s financial system of record for accounting and other fiscal operations.
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ITS and the Office of the Provost will co-host Staff Technology Day on Tuesday, June 4, 2024.
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Dear UConn Students,
We are writing with information about your
transition to Microsoft 365
. If you are graduating in May 2024 or leaving the University, please disregard this message; you will receive a separate notification about changes to IT services.
Reason for Change
Information Technology Services communicated this past year that the University was discontinuing their relationship with Google and would be moving everyone to Microsoft 365. This decision was driven by changes to our contract with Google. They no longer offer free and unlimited storage to higher education institutions, and the cost to retain the services, even with drastic cuts to storage amounts, was significant.
Transition Process
ITS will move your email and files in Google Drive to Microsoft 365 for you. This will happen after the Spring 2024 semester ends. Due to the large volume of data, we are moving students in batches, which means not everyone is moving at the same time.
Your transition will have two phases.
Preparation:
Starting in April, we will begin making a copy of your files and messages. Your past email messages will go into Microsoft Outlook. A copy of your Google Drive files will go into a folder in OneDrive. We will ask you to ignore these copies. You may continue to access, create, and edit files in Google during this phase.
Final Migration:
Sometime after the semester ends, you’ll receive a message from us telling you that we are finalizing your migration. At this point, your Google Drive data will be in Microsoft OneDrive and your email delivered to Microsoft Outlook. You should
start using Microsoft 365
, and we will provide you with training information.
Migration Limitations
Unfortunately, not all files or features in Google Workspace will transfer to Microsoft 365. Links to other UConn Google Drive files will break and need to be recreated. You will also need to “re-share” documents. View this guide on
what will and will not migrate
for more information.
We know that this is a substantial change for you, and we will support you through the process. If you have questions or need assistance, please contact the Technology Support Center at
techsupport.uconn.edu
or techsupport@uconn.edu.
We are updating workstations managed by ITS with Microsoft Systems Center Configuration Manager (SCCM).
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ITS has communicated since July about discontinuing the university’s relationship with Google, and we have been working with our community to manage and migrate their Google data.
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Unlocked and unattended computers are a security risk.
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ITS made the business decision to migrate away from Google’s Workspace services after they modified their terms and conditions.
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A NetID is a unique, public identifier that is assigned to every individual associated with the university.
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ITS is transitioning interdepartmental telecommunications (telecom) billing from Pinnacle to Softeligent.
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Maintenance and management of the university data network infrastructure requires ongoing effort and upgrades in order to preserve or improve capacity, capabilities, and robustness.
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ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Tuesday, December 5, through Wednesday, December 20, 2023.
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There is a better process for reporting spam and phishing messages.
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At UConn, ITS and other units acquire, maintain, and evolve various technologies to support the diverse business, research, and academic needs of the University.
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ITS typically uses a standard firstname.lastname@uconn.edu format when we issue an official UConn email address.
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The SDLC is an industry best practice methodology for planning, creating, and delivering software that effectively and efficiently meets business requirements and customer needs.
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Workstations with up-to-date operating systems receive the latest security patches, which provide protection against viruses and malware that can cause account and system-wide compromises.
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Colleges, schools, and departments at the University purchase, install, maintain, and support the audio-visual (AV) infrastructure in their individual conference rooms.
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ITS will begin implementing storage quotas on Google Workspace accounts starting this October.
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Firewalls are network security devices that monitor and filter incoming and outgoing network traffic based on established policies.
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Scammers are known to send messages that exploit the urgency of predictable events, such as tax season and the start of the school year, to more easily fool recipients into engaging.
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Email is an official means of university communication.  Email services are provided in support of the administrative and academic functions of the University, which may include various types of protected information (e.g., FERPA, HIPAA, PHI or PII types of data).
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The Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks are prescriptive configuration recommendations for more than 25+ vendor product families.
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ITS has provided a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) gateway to facilitate external access to university computers (e.g., work desktops) from local devices at another location (e.g., your home computer).
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HuskyVision has been the University’s on-campus cable television service to residence halls and administrative buildings since 1998.
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We announced our decision this week to phase out Google Workspace services at UConn and move customers to Microsoft 365.
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The University has offered faculty, staff, and students two platforms for communication and collaboration – Google Workspace and Microsoft 365.
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Mobile devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops, have become ubiquitous, and our community utilizes them for a wide variety of tasks.
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ITS manages the multi-year life cycle of classroom technology, and this generally entails incrementally updating equipment over time.
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Your login credentials verify your identity and help guard your information.
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EMS Campus is a cloud-hosted university-wide enterprise scheduling solution.
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ITS has focused on the largest part of our wired network, the access layer or edge of our internal infrastructure, and has made significant progress raising it to a contemporary standard over the past four years.
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AI technologies simulate higher level thinking and can be used to perform tasks that might typically require input from a person.
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ITS is updating Azure Active Directory Single Sign On on May 19, 2023.
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As part of our Microsoft enterprise agreement, UConn faculty and staff now have access to Viva Learning.
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The University uses SAP Concur for travel and expense management.
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DR is a critical IT operational capability designed to quickly restore and deliver key services from a remote location in response to a catastrophic loss of our production facilities in Storrs. ITS built and maintains a DR site in the state operated Groton data center.
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Duo two-factor authentication is a multi-step account login technology that requires users to enter more information than just a password.
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UConn faculty and staff use Microsoft 365 for their university email and calendaring, and many are accustomed to using Outlook to schedule meetings among colleagues.
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CEN, an open access Internet service provider, is hosting its annual conference at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, CT on May 11, 2023.
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ITS provides direct management support for over 6,000 Windows workstations at the university.
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VoIP enables you to make voice calls via a digital signal over the data network rather than over traditional phone lines.
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Kenna Security, a part of Cisco Systems, provides industry-leading technology that leverages threat intelligence and data science to identify and assess vulnerability risks, allowing IT professionals to better prioritize resources.
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The university community increasingly seeks systems, services, and capabilities that are hosted externally, which typically means that the associated data is stored outside of UConn.
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LastPass is a secure password manager that supports good password hygiene.
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Microsoft 365 delivers contemporary file sharing and storage capabilities with SharePoint and OneDrive.
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ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Friday, January 13, through Friday, January 27, 2023.
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The changes have kept coming in 2022.
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Secure Shell (SSH) is a network protocol that normally operates on port 22 and allows remote logins to computers.
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Software companies regularly release updates and patches to add features, fix bugs, and address vulnerabilities.
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ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Tuesday, December 6, through Wednesday, December 21, 2022.
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In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I write to thank everyone for their efforts and contributions.
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AnyConnect utilizes NetID credentials for authentication, but it does not comply with our single sign on (SSO) standard.
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The requirement for 2FA protection when logging in using NetID Single Sign On, into Microsoft 365, or into the computers in centrally scheduled classrooms goes into effect on November 10th.
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ITS strongly encourages the use of up-to-date hardware and software.
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ITS provides a managed workstation service for both university PCs and Macs where we require System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) for Windows and JAMF for OSX to patch and maintain the operating systems and Defender ATP, an endpoint detection and response platform, to protect against malware and other attacks.
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Kuali Build is a cloud-based application development platform that enables code-free creation of online forms and automated approval workflows for university units and departments.
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Phishing attacks are a regular occurrence for every higher education institution and ensuring awareness to these risks is vital to protecting institutional and individual systems and data.
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October is Cybersecurity Awareness month. This is a national campaign designed to highlight the importance of cybersecurity and provide Americans with the information and resources needed to be safer and more secure online.
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ITS has been in the process of transitioning our VPN service from our legacy Pulse Secure to our new Cisco AnyConnect.
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The UConn primary data center is an access-controlled location with the specialized support, equipment, and facilities needed to properly house the servers, storage, and key network elements for much of the University’s critical cyber infrastructure.
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ITS, in collaboration with UConn IT partners, began a software review this past spring of products used to remotely access and troubleshoot client computers.
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2FA greatly protects data and applications from compromise by using a second source of validation, like a phone or token, to verify user identity before granting access.
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UConn has initiated the project to move Kuali Financials from on-premise to a cloud-hosted solution.
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Modern authentication uses OAuth, a widely adopted framework that provides a secure user authentication workflow and includes support for interactive multi-factor authentication and risk analysis.
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ITS is implementing two changes to the UConn wireless (Wi-Fi) networks at the beginning of August.
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WALR is a multi-year infrastructure initiative to upgrade the data network on every campus to a contemporary engineered standard.
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HPC gives researchers the power and capacity to process large amounts of data (big data) and solve complex computational problems.  It is fundamental to the university mission of research and figures prominently in many proposals.
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Criminals use stolen credentials to attack accounts and cause harm to organizations and individuals, but there are multiple, complimentary strategies that offer protection.
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We will be deprecating the ITS-provided Dropbox and Filelocker services.
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Windows 11, the latest version of Microsoft’s client operating system, was released on October 5, 2021.
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ITS will be retiring the personal (P) drive.
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ITS deploys, operates, and maintains the equipment in computer labs located in the libraries on all UConn campuses.
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WALR is a data network refresh initiative to upgrade the infrastructure on every campus to a contemporary engineered standard.
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DR is a critical operational IT capability designed and intended to quickly restore and deliver key services from a remote location in response to the catastrophic loss of our production facilities in Storrs.
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We communicated with you in early April that ITS was pursuing strategies to reduce risks to university desktops.
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Links are often included in email messages because they deliver additional information or provide an avenue for action.
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ITS is shifting to Microsoft SharePoint as a strategic technology for services.
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ITS is updating how we will support our wireless data network.
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Desktop support is performed by specialized technicians who directly access individual computers and other devices to resolve technical and other operating issues.
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The transition to cloud-based IT solutions is an industry wide trend that continues unabated.
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ITS is enabling Seamless Single Sign-On (SSO) for all domain-joined Windows workstations on April 18, 2022.
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Kuali Financials is a comprehensive software suite that serves as the University’s financial system of record for accounting and other fiscal operations.
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CEN, an open access Internet service provider, is hosting its annual conference at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, CT on May 5, 2022.
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Duo two-factor authentication (2FA) service is now formally available to students.
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The University’s legacy Pulse Secure VPN infrastructure was inadequate to meet growing needs, and we chose industry leading Cisco AnyConnect as its successor.
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The legacy Fortinet OPS firewall protects the servers and applications housed within the University data center from malicious traffic.
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Office 365 is a Microsoft cloud product that includes Office and other services.
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We maintain the Knowledge Base (KB) on Confluence, Atlassian’s collaboration tool.
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This year continues to be one of transition for our community.
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The University’s Office of Student Financial Aid Services produces numerous reports that are required to comply with federal and state statutes.
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UConn has a substantive collection of applications that share information as a normal and useful part of their operation.
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ITS selected Motus as the new service provider for university-issued cellular phones that will manage all aspects of the process and deliver the extended, 24-hour support that has long been requested by our community.
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Throughout October, ITS engaged in activities consistent with the national campaign’s overarching theme of individual and organizational responsibility.
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The new Kuali Build integrated forms and automated approval workflow tool is now generally available.
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AnyConnect is an industry leading and widely used VPN service that ITS selected to replace our legacy Pulse Secure VPN service.
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Regular review and revision of policies is part of evolving a mature information security program that protects systems and data for both our community and the institution.
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ITS is kicking off a communication series for Cybersecurity Awareness Month.
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A new employee and spousal tuition waiver tool was launched on the first day of classes.
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UConn Early College Experience provides opportunities for non-matriculated high school students to take UConn courses at their school.
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ITS offers Carousel Digital Signage service for the University that includes both large signs, frequently displayed in lobbies, and smaller room signs.  Our vendor announced that their on-premise system would be end-of-life by 2022, at which time our existing service would stop receiving updates.
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ITS launched Wepa at the start of the semester as a replacement for HuskyPrint.
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The internet protocol (IP) addresses for devices on the UConn network are overwhelmingly dynamic and are issued automatically by the network for specified durations.
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The current VPN service is offered using Pulse Secure. Increased demand attributed to telecommuting and other remote activities exposed limitations in its deployed capacity and ability to manage higher loads effectively.
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TickeTrak is the University’s parking system.
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Cisco Umbrella is a Domain Name System (DNS) filtering product that guards against threats on the internet, such as malware, phishing, and ransomware.
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University employees will begin returning to their campus workspaces on or after August 16 after being away for nearly a year and half.
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HuskyPrint is the current ITS on-campus for fee printing service designed primarily for students, but also open to the community.
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ITS has been responsible for coordinating the purchase, provisioning, and support of university-issued cellular phones.
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ITS is making an emergency change on July 1, 2021 at 5:00 pm on Windows workstations and servers in the UConn Active Directory.
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ITS has progressively equipped centrally-scheduled classrooms with capabilities that support remote teaching and learning.
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Substantive elements of the University’s information technology cybersecurity infrastructure will be reviewed by Deloitte, an external agency.
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Microsoft Teams previously offered two main web conferencing features that served two distinct use cases.  Meetings was available for connecting one-on-one or with small groups and Live Events for broadcasting to a large audience.
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ITS continues our multi-year initiative to update networking for all campuses and bring the whole University to a contemporary standard.
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The University’s move to a mostly remote learning and working environment over the past year has put a strain on many of our capabilities.
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Webex is a cloud platform used for on-demand collaboration, virtual meetings, web conferencing, and videoconferencing.  Many faculty and staff have turned to it for hosting and participating in large presentations and conferences, which are common activities at universities.
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OneDrive is a Microsoft hosted cloud storage solution available to everyone at the university through our Microsoft 365 licensing agreement.
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ITS has released the latest standard design for the audio-visual technology in university conference rooms.
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ITS has scheduled disaster recovery testing of our tier 1 services for the week of June 6.
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ITS is formally introducing the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express (Unified CCX) service offering.
When UConn shifted to mostly work from home in March 2020, ITS quickly organized a solution to permit units to answer university phone calls remotely.
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ITS maintains the IT Status page to communicate information about planned and unplanned outages, service disruptions, and other community impacting situations.
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ITS, Accounts Payable, and the Office of the Bursar are providing the University with flexible and secure vendor payment options.
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The companies that provide our software, such as Microsoft and Google, regularly release updates and patches to add features, fix bugs, and address vulnerabilities.  It is our general operating position that all software should be properly maintained and all relevant patches applied.
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We are currently using basic authentication at the University.  It has security vulnerabilities that can be exploited by brute force or password spray attacks.
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ITS is introducing archiving to the ITS provided Q: and R: drives.
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ITS has engaged in a number of initiatives to help ensure that our community has access to contemporary devices of sufficient quality to facilitate their research, teaching, and learning success.
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ITS is migrating networks and applications hosted in the UConn data center to a new firewall.
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Microsoft 365, which is the rebadged Office 365 service, is a collection of communication, collaboration, and productivity applications that are available through our enterprise-wide education license to all active faculty, staff, and students.
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Use of our supported videoconferencing solutions – Webex, Teams, and Collaborate – increased by over 400% at UConn when we went fully online in March 2020.
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Much of the university continues to teach, learn, and work primarily from home or other off-site locations.  This has allowed the University to remain safely open, but it has changed the IT support landscape.
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ITS will be implementing a Domain Name System (DNS) filtering product, Cisco Umbrella, to enhance protection against web-based threats.
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The ITS Security Office recently initiated a simulated phishing campaign at the request of the Joint Audit and Compliance Committee (JACC).  UConn faculty and staff received test messages this past October that mimicked a common attack.
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ITS is simplifying and streamlining individual support services. The Technology Support Center (TSC) is housed in Homer Babbidge Library (HBL) and provides general IT support to faculty, staff, and students.
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ITS is implementing changes that will better secure remote connectivity to campus.
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Since the release of the redesigned myUConn app this fall, ITS and our partners have leveraged features to better support community engagement during this unprecedented semester.
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File sharing gives others access to digital media and is a key mechanism for collaboration.  In the past, this was limited to sending, receiving, or accessing information in files, but modern systems also support co-authorship, versioning, and concurrent editing.
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Webex is a university supported videoconferencing application that allows people to meet and engage virtually.  HuskyCT is the university supported and branded Blackboard learning management system (LMS).
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When the University began delivering services remotely, it became apparent that not all support practices transitioned effectively to this mode. Staff, particularly those who interact frequently with students and parents, needed a way to answer and respond to calls to their office numbers while working off-site.
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ITS uses PeopleSoft Campus Solutions (CS) for our Student Administration (SA) system.  This is the authoritative system of record for student academic data, the administrative environment supporting numerous academic processes, and a service portal for students.
(more…)
KnowBe4 is an IT security resource available to all faculty and staff at UConn. The integrated platform for security awareness training and phishing attack simulation covers an extensive range of topics and delivers content in varying and engaging formats, such as games, short videos, modules, and even sitcom-style shows.
(more…)
ITS is planning to install new security software, Windows Defender for Endpoint (formerly Windows Defender Advanced Threat Prevention), to the Windows workstations of administrative areas in the Managed Workstation program.
(more…)
ITS, Office of the Registrar, and the Center for Excellence in Teaching (CETL) collaborated this past spring to create and populate the classroom directory tool with new content and capability.
(more…)
KFS is a comprehensive software suite that serves as the University’s financial system of record for accounting and other fiscal operations. The upgrade includes enhanced usability with a redesigned interface, navigation, and search.
(more…)
Webex is an enterprise solution for video conferencing, online, meetings, and web conferencing. It is often utilized to deliver coursework virtually.
(more…)
Phishing scams are designed to install malware, steal personal information, or invariably accomplish something that will not be in your best interests.
(more…)
The Wired Access Layer Refresh (WALR) project is an initiative to update networking across the university.
(more…)
The University needed a way to collect, analyze, and act on large amounts of health-related data so that students could return.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, August 26, and goes through Monday, September 7.
(more…)
Adobe CC is a set of applications for video, design, photography, and the web.
(more…)
myUConn is the official UConn mobile application that connects our community to a collection of information and services which enhance campus life and online experiences.
(more…)
A new Student Technology Training course is available.
(more…)
ITS will be removing Spirion from university-owned computers.
(more…)
The University is announcing device requirements for new and continuing UConn students.
(more…)
ITS negotiates an annual Microsoft enterprise license on behalf of UConn.
(more…)
Teams and Skype for Business are available to everyone at the University through Office 365.
(more…)
A key role of enterprise IT is identifying security risks and protecting our community from them as much as practical.
(more…)
ITS is adding two-factor authentication protection to PeopleSoft.
(more…)
The institution and individuals have the obligation to use software properly on all university-owned computing assets.
(more…)
ITS is adding self-service lecture capture capabilities to more UConn classrooms.
(more…)
A new Account Sponsorship application is available on netid.uconn.edu.
(more…)
Ally Alternative, a website accessibility enhancement for Aurora, has been enabled for many university websites.
(more…)
UConn AnyWare is an ITS service that provides desktop virtualization using VMWare Horizon and application virtualization of university-licensed software using Citrix Virtual Apps.
(more…)
Webex Events at UConn allows you or a panel to host online events and webinars for up to 1,000 participants and stream for up to 40,000 attendees.
(more…)
ITS supports the following web conferencing solutions: Microsoft Teams, Blackboard Collaborate, Google Hangouts, and WebEx.
(more…)
ITS is making a change to Webex tonight, April 15, that will enable better protection of meetings.
The incidence of uninvited and disruptive guests crashing video conferencing meetings has increased. In response, ITS is implementing a change in Webex to better protect against these intrusions. Starting at 10:00 pm tonight, all personal meeting rooms will be “locked” by default. When participants join the locked conference, they will wait in the “lobby” until admitted by the meeting host. The host can admit some, all, or none of the participants. When using WebEx as a telephone bridge, the host will need to unlock the room by pressing *5 to allow entry. Hosts may also adjust or disable the personal lock settings in advance but should be aware of the potential risk.
If a disruption occurs, the host should first expel the participant and then report the incident to
techsupport@uconn.edu
(please include your NetID and the time/date of the meeting). Below are how-to articles that will help you manage your room and lock settings.
If you have questions or need assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us at
techsupport@uconn.edu
————————
Securing Your WebEx Meeting
Adjusting Personal Room Automatic Lock Settings
Managing Participants
Using WebEx as a Telephone Bridge
ITS offers a new utility that simplifies the transition from the P: drive to Microsoft OneDrive.
(more…)
The University and its community have proven to be quite resilient over the past few weeks, and many, if not most, activities have shifted to either partially or fully remote.
(more…)
Current events have resulted in increased use of systems, services, and capabilities that support remote teaching, learning, meeting, and collaborating.
(more…)
Tawk.to is a service that ITS uses on the Technology Support Center website.
(more…)
ITS has expanded network services to support remote activities.
(more…)
ITS will have a limited moratorium on activities or efforts that have the potential to disrupt remote access starting Saturday, March 14, through Monday, April 6.
(more…)
The Office of the Registrar has historically offered information about centrally-scheduled classrooms on their website.
(more…)
The ITS audiovisual team is working with the Quantitative Learning Center (Q Center) to pilot the use of Cisco Webex Board.
(more…)
Our community may need to send bulk email to hundreds or even thousands of people.
(more…)
The SAP Concur project is a collaborative UConn initiative to implement a best-in-class, cloud-based Travel and Expense management service for the university.
(more…)
Between 12:10 am – 2:40 am on Thursday, February 13, there may be interruptions to internet connectivity while the Internet Service Provider performs planned network maintenance.
(more…)
The UConn Daily Digest is a recurring publication created to keep the university community informed while simultaneously reducing the number of messages sent to individual inboxes.
(more…)
ITS will be adding a banner security feature to our email service.
(more…)
A new digital wayfinding service is available to help faculty, staff, students, and guests better navigate the campus.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Friday, January 17, through Monday, January 27.
(more…)
The deployment of full wireless network service is complete for Gampel Pavilion.
(more…)
A robust IT security program to protect institutional assets is based on multiple layers.
(more…)
In a Town Hall presentation, I noted that innovation is the highest maturity level for an organization.
(more…)
The University uses WebEx, a videoconferencing application that enables online meetings in a virtual room, to host interviews with remote applicants.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, December 4, through Wednesday, December 18, 2019.
(more…)
Phishing messages continue to be one of our larger security threats.
(more…)
UConn is introducing a potential cybersecurity enhancement.
(more…)
Student employees occupy dual roles at the University.  As students, they have access to information and resources consistent with this academic role.
(more…)
Passwords verify your identity, which protects against account compromises and fraudulent access to data and resources.
(more…)
A new voter registration feature is available on the Student Administration (SA) system.
(more…)
Up-to-date software and operating systems (OS) on workstations are essential for secure, robust IT operations.
(more…)
As members of the IT community, we all contribute to the fulfillment of the institutional mission of research, teaching, learning, and outreach.
(more…)
The data network represents a large capital investment in facilities, cabling, and equipment. It is central to the vast majority of university activities, and demands on this vital resource continue to increase over time.
(more…)
We typically see a surge in phishing at the beginning of each fall semester.  The trend has continued this year with a substantive increase in emails being launched from compromised university accounts or masquerading as institutional messaging.
(more…)
ITS has expanded self-service capabilities for the Kaltura Lecture Capture (KLC) service. Self-service recording is now part of the standard classroom technology package and self-service live streaming available in lecture halls and large venues.
(more…)
HuskyPrint is a computer printing service with over 30 printers located on all six campuses. It was designed for students but is open to the entire UConn community.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, August 21, through Monday, September 2.
(more…)
Aurora is a multisite WordPress Service that enables customers to publish websites that meet institutional brand and accessibility standards, have a mobile responsive design, and remain current with security updates.
(more…)
University has approved and published the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Accessibility policy.
(more…)
Your network identifier (NetID) and password credentials are essential to navigating online resources at UConn.
(more…)
In 2014, we published a strategic plan that was well aligned to the existing university landscape.
(more…)
Students can opt to join the new UConn Bookstore Student Account Program.
(more…)
Dr. Chris Bernard will be joining ITS on July 19 as the new university Chief Information Security Officer (CISO).
(more…)
ITS is expanding wireless network coverage in campus outdoor areas.
(more…)
When Microsoft suddenly ended support for
System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP), ITS implemented ESET Endpoint Protection as a one year bridge strategy and began exploring viable options for long-term antivirus solutions for Macs.
(more…)
We are writing share our plans to manage IT services during the upcoming planned power outage.
(more…)
A new course search tool is available at
catalog.uconn.edu
(more…)
Service updates are available for the digital signage service.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, May 1, through Monday, May 13, 2019.
(more…)
ITS is pursuing an approach to improve network port utilization.
(more…)
The ITS Adobe Create Cloud (CC) purchasing program is now available to UConn faculty, staff, and graduate students.
(more…)
UConn and UConn Health are consolidating student systems.
(more…)
ITS is updating elements of the university data network.
(more…)
We recently completed a hardware/software project to facilitate improved bus service at the University.
(more…)
ITS is beginning to assess advanced data analytics solutions.
(more…)
New
self-service option for the ITS Scantron service.
(more…)
ITS recently completed network refresh projects for both Wilbur Cross and the Student Union.
(more…)
ITS two-factor authentication (2FA) enhanced security project has moved into its formal implementation phase.
(more…)
The University is transitioning to a new Student Administration Data Mart (SADM).
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, January 16, through Monday, January 28.
(more…)
On Tuesday, December 11, our community began to experience intermittent delays accessing the P: drive.
(more…)
ITS has received reports that access to the personal (P) drive is intermittently degraded.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Friday, December 7, through Monday, December 17, 2018.
(more…)
Security threats to personal and institutional information are an ongoing risk.
(more…)
Written messages are a formal part of interaction for IT professionals at UConn and elsewhere.
(more…)
A primary way our community interacts with IT at the University is through formal and informal support channels.
(more…)
Advance information about a new tool for updating display names in UConn directories is now available.
(more…)
2FA prevents unauthorized access to online resources by imposing two independent forms of identification in order for you to successfully authenticate.
(more…)
HuskyCT is the University’s Blackboard learning management system (LMS) used by instructors for the administration, documentation, tracking, reporting and delivery of educational material for courses or programs.
(more…)
The ITS Strategic Plan, delivered in 2014, encapsulates our best practical thinking about institutional IT and communicates long term directions for the organization.
(more…)
ITS has launched a NetID self-service communications campaign.
(more…)
The University has been negotiating over the past months with Adobe for their Creative Cloud product.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting
Wednesday, August 22
, through
Monday, September 3
(more…)
Starting this week, ITS Information Security Office is sending a Risk and Compliance Self-Assessment Questionnaire to designated IT professionals in each school, college, campus, and department.
(more…)
Accessible digital content and technologies ensure broader engagement by removing impediments for people with disabilities.
(more…)
The university community relies on multiple devices and effective wireless infrastructure
(more…)
ITS supports hardware and software used for recording, streaming, and sharing classroom and other instructional content.
(more…)
The overwhelming majority of systems, services, and capabilities have resumed.
(more…)
In our strategic plan, one of our core goals is to pursue IT solutions with our functional partners that support and evolve business processes at the University.
(more…)
ITS implemented new email filtering capabilities in university email systems.
(more…)
ITS has added a WePresent wireless projection and device mirroring device to the standard deployment for Hi-Tech classrooms.
(more…)
View technical details for the upcoming architectural changes to the university email service.
(more…)
ITS is making updates to university websites that will provide better support for explicit disclosure and acceptance of data collection.
(more…)
Delegated Access is now available. It is a new feature in the University’s Student Administration System (Student Admin) that enables students to share access to certain portions of their education record.
(more…)
Stata/SE will be available to all UConn faculty, staff, and students starting
July 1, 2018
(more…)
AutoCAD for Education is now available to UConn faculty, staff, and students.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting
Friday, April 27
, through
Monday, May 7, 2018
(more…)
BI Publisher is a new reporting tool for the UConn Student Administration (SA) system.
(more…)
ITS has enhanced the university’s software website,
software.uconn.edu
(more…)
Active Directory (AD) is a foundational technology that supports identity and access management at UConn.
(more…)
The Scantron exam scanning service will be modified.
(more…)
ITS is focused on protecting our community, their personal information, and institutional data as we evolve systems, services, and capabilities.  Phishing and other nefarious activities attempt to circumvent security practices by stealing your credentials and using them to access sensitive information.
(more…)
ITS announces recent investments in the Storrs High Performance Computing (HPC) facility.
(more…)
ITS announces recent investments in the Storrs High Performance Computing (HPC) facility.
(more…)
ITS will be testing an improvement to the University’s email handling.
(more…)
We have changed our name to Information Technology Services (ITS).
(more…)
ITS advocates for the timely installation of patches and updates on all devices.
(more…)
ITS received funds from the administration in FY17 to expand wireless network service in university administrative and academic buildings.
(more…)
It is important from a robust operations as well as a security perspective that all software be up-to-date and fully patched.
(more…)
Cyber criminals notoriously exploit current events, like tax season, to mimic legitimate email messages.
(more…)
The Kaltura Lecture Capture (KLC) service now has enhanced self-service capabilities.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Friday, December 8, through Monday, December 18, 2017.
(more…)
ITS has modified the UConn directories.
(more…)
The ITS major storage subsystem has been experiencing intermittent performance problems.
(more…)
Intermittent issues with the university’s storage environment are impacting authentication as well as all local services that rely on storage.
(more…)
ITS is creating a new affiliation in LDAP.
(more…)
ITS will be updating the security software deployed to managed workstations on
November 16
. It will display the new product name and logo Spirion.
(more…)
ITS has implemented changes that will help members of our community better protect themselves from phishing emails.
(more…)
ITS has made changes to the Aurora service in response to the Chrome web browser security updates.
(more…)
New procedures and signage for UConn classrooms is being implemented to keep them ready for teaching and learning.
(more…)
ITS has made recent updates to the Aurora web content service.
(more…)
ITS publishes annual Strategic Plan progress report.
(more…)
ITS launches a new site for UConn email services.
(more…)
ITS has updated the classroom technology lifecycle plan.
(more…)
ITS has updated the computer labs in university libraries.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, August 23, through
Monday, September 4
(more…)
ITS has added the Kaltura Lecture Capture to our service offerings.
(more…)
The Identity and Access Management (IAM) team has created a roadmap to share projects planned for the University.
(more…)
An enterprise-wide digital signage service is now available.
(more…)
ITS has established a self-service portal in our Microsoft Bitlocker Administration and Monitoring (MBAM) environment.
(more…)
ITS is making two services available to our IT Community that can be used to provide information about devices connected to the UConn network.
(more…)
Beginning in August, the University is renovating the Gant Science Complex, and before construction starts, ITS offices housed in the building have relocated or are relocating to the following areas on campus:
(more…)
ITS is announcing the formal availability of a database hosting service.
(more…)
This past week, ITS concluded our annual test of our DR plan.
(more…)
ITS will be expanding the wireless network service in university administrative and academic buildings.
(more…)
The Secure Shell (SSH) Gateway is now available.
(more…)
The recent cyberattack involving ransomware has been infecting computers and critical systems worldwide since Friday.
(more…)
ITS is exploring approaches to enhance the University’s protection from spam emails.
(more…)
Operational changes to the Storrs High Performance Computing (HPC) facility will be effective July 1.
(more…)
ITS and UConn Health have collaborated to improve accessibility to Microsoft products for faculty, staff, and students.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Friday, April 29 through Friday, May 12, 2017.
(more…)
ITS has created an IT Community site (itcommunity.uconn.edu) designed to provide our technical colleagues and stakeholders with information germane to their positions and professional interests at the University.
(more…)
ITS is announcing upcoming changes to the University’s student-use Adobe contract.
(more…)
ITS has been developing a vision for expanding and enhancing service delivery to all UConn campuses.
(more…)
The IBM Forms Experience Builder (FEB) system is available to developers within our IT community.
(more…)
Two wireless networks that ITS provides are designed and intended to serve different populations.
(more…)
The ITS Technology Support Center offers a chat support option.
(more…)
UConn AnyWare is now generally available.
(more…)
An architecture change was recently implemented for HuskyCT.
(more…)
Phishing is the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, social security numbers, and credit card details (and, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
(more…)
ITS has updated centrally licensed software.
Individual software is a general IT resource that impacts every part of our community, allowing each of us to be more successful in our respective roles.
(more…)
Updates to the PeopleSoft Student Administration System (Student Admin) have enhanced its support resources and improved its landing page.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, January 11, through Monday, January 23.
(more…)
Google Apps for Education was chosen for students because it was both a good fit for and a strong preference of this population.
(more…)
Google Apps for Education was chosen for students because it was both a good fit for and a strong preference of this population.
(more…)
Over the past year, ITS has made strategic investments in data storage infrastructure in support of institutional and research activities.
(more…)
Cisco Meeting Server (CMS) bridge is now available for video conferencing.
(more…)
A pilot version of Kaltura is available to UConn instructors and students.
(more…)
ITS has two new service offerings for our community.
(more…)
ITS has expanded the available storage space on personal (P:) drives.
(more…)
ITS has established structural changes in order to address our current identity management issues.
(more…)
Our frontline source for reporting up-to-date information about central systems is the
IT Systems Status site
(more…)
As with any technology, the University’s web servers and supporting resources evolve over time, offering more sophisticated features and better performance.
(more…)
We designed the IT All Staff Conference with our IT community in mind; we wanted to create an environment conducive to networking and a forum where IT staff could share their accomplishments.
(more…)
As a central provider of IT services, ITS is responsible for licensing, procuring, delivering, and maintaining software delivered at an institutional level.
(more…)
ITS will implement firewall changes on September 13
th
that will impact the university wireless network.
(more…)
New Dell computers ordered on or after Monday, August 22
nd
through the HuskyPC program will ship with Windows 10 (Win10) as the installed operating system.
(more…)
The Schrödinger Small-Molecule Drug Discovery Suite is now available to UConn faculty, staff, and students on all campuses.
(more…)
ITS has updated automatic Q: drive mapping on ITS managed workstations.
(more…)
ITS has begun a campaign to encourage our UConn community to set password recovery options for their NetID accounts.
(more…)
Expanded access to the MathWorks MATLAB software will be available to UConn faculty, staff, and students on all campuses, including Farmington, beginning July 1, 2016.
(more…)
eSignLive, a web based electronic signature product, is now available for use by university departments, schools, and colleges.
(more…)
We are writing to share our plans for the persistence of student email accounts.
(more…)
Message encryption and rights management is preliminarily available on the university’s Office 365 email system.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Friday, April 29 through Saturday, May 14, 2016.
(more…)
A number of concerns about the voicemail to email integration have been surfaced by university stakeholders.
(more…)
UConn and many other universities were recently victims of a network attack where unrestricted, Internet accessible printers were remotely activated and used to print offensive propaganda.
(more…)
A little over a year ago, we finalized UConn’s five-year strategic plan for information technology.
(more…)
Plus Email Addressing, also known as sub-addressing, allows you to create variations of a normal email address that will still be delivered to your institutional email account.
(more…)
Threats to personal and institutional information security are an ongoing reality for network connected individuals and organizations.
(more…)
Understanding the relationship between services and our community is the key to effectively meeting the needs of our constituents and is the primary perspective that informed the design of our models for service delivery.
(more…)
While public broadcast and cable television throughout the country were required to transition from analog to digital, private installations like we have at the University did not have this obligation.
(more…)
External access to restricted university resources has traditionally been provided via our authenticated Virtual Private Network (VPN) service.
(more…)
Portfolio is a tool within UConn’s Blackboard learning management system that enables instructors and students to collect, organize, and share completed work.
(more…)
The Information Security Office would like to share draft information security and technology policies and to ask for your review and feedback before they are finalized.
(more…)
On Sunday, December 27
th
, the University of Connecticut was the victim of an IT service compromise.
(more…)
ITS will be replacing the voicemail system for faculty and staff on the UConn Storrs campus.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Sunday, December 13 through Thursday, December 24, 2015.
(more…)
ITS would like to let you know about an opportunity to preview our new application virtualization service, UConn AnyWare.
(more…)
ITS has made changes to our IT community mailing lists.
We maintain an IT Contacts mailing list that is delivered through our listserv environment and includes all ITS staff, university-wide IT staff, and other stakeholders with a vested interest in IT.
(more…)
The final exam schedule for the Storrs campus has, in recent years, been generated within a software package that the university utilizes to manage room resources.
(more…)
A year ago, ITS published the final version of our 2014 – 2018 Strategic Plan, a culmination of a collaborative development and review process.
(more…)
ITS is preparing to reinstate Identity Finder.
(more…)
The goal of all university IT, both central and distributed, is to ensure the secure and robust operation of institutional IT assets for our UConn community.
(more…)
The process for requesting and activating NetIDadmin accounts has been improved.
(more…)
UConn instructors leverage our learning management system, HuskyCT, for a wide range of activities, from supplementing coursework to delivering online classes that extend the University’s reach beyond the campuses.
(more…)
When rogue email accounts are used to spam the internet, downstream providers typically respond by blocking all email from the source server.
(more…)
During this past week, the university community experienced intermittent outages and performance issues with network connectivity.
(more…)
ITS has launched a revamped version of the university’s mobile application myUConn.
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Wednesday, August 26, through Monday, September 14.
(more…)
ITS will deploy an update of the NetID Single Sign On prompt on Tuesday, August 18.
(more…)
ITS is happy to announce that the migration of Genesys from UConn to PSR went smoothly and our local mainframe is now decommissioned.
(more…)
This is the final update about our local mainframe decommissioning and its transition to an external provider.
(more…)
HuskyVision will be transferred from analog to digital broadcast television for the fall semester.
(more…)
A power shutdown in the Math-Science Building (MSB) is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, August 8
th
between 5:00 am – 5:00 pm.
(more…)
ITS
has developed a new configuration for our high-tech classroom computers.
(more…)
Below is an update on our progress developing High Availability (HA) capabilities for ITS systems and services.
HA represents continuous service delivery under normal circumstances and rapid restoration in the event of disruption.
(more…)
ITS has been actively engaged in moving off the mainframe to other platforms for the past two years, and this process is now approaching completion.
(more…)
We would like to share information about individual web conferencing services available to the UConn community.
(more…)
HuskyCT, our learning management system, is now in a High Availability (HA) configuration.
(more…)
ITS has a proposed design for expanding the University’s application virtualization service offerings.
(more…)
ITS has temporarily disabled Identity Finder while we finalize the long-range plans for the service.
(more…)
ITS has re-designed the IT Status page.
The purpose of the IT Status page is to communicate the condition of systems and services to our UConn community.
(more…)
The HuskyTime student time card system is now available to the university community.
ITS worked closely with UConn Recreation to develop HuskyTime, a streamlined web-based application that allows students to enter their time into an online time card
(more…)
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Friday, May 1 through Friday, May 15.
(more…)
Microsoft is rebranding Lync Online, their enterprise communication tool, as Skype for Business.
(more…)
For faculty and staff interested in learning more about Office 365, ITS and Microsoft are co-hosting a free presentation
(more…)
We would like to remind you that your university email account will migrate to Office 365 this weekend and to spotlight available support resources.
(more…)
We would like to remind our IT community that ITS is hosting a town hall meeting to discuss the upcoming migration to Microsoft Office 365 tomorrow,
April 1
st
at 9:00 a.m. in the Dodd Konover Auditorium
(more…)
We are offering the opportunity to migrate to Office 365 prior to the university-wide deployment scheduled to start at 5:00 pm on April 10
th
(more…)
We would like to remind our IT community that ITS is hosting a town hall meeting to discuss the upcoming migration to Microsoft Office 365 tomorrow,
March 25
th
at 9:00 a.m. in the Dodd Konover Auditorium
(more…)
The University has made revisions to the university electronic communication policy that will impact email forwarding.
(more…)
Below is an update on the upcoming April 10
th
university migration from our local email and calendar service to Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud service and to share strategies ITS is employing to ensure a smooth transition.
(more…)
We are inviting members of our IT community to a town hall meeting to discuss the upcoming migration to Microsoft Office 365 and initiate a conversation about support strategies.
(more…)
Faculty and staff who have accounts on the central university email and calendar service, please be aware of the university migration from our local Exchange environment to Microsoft Office 365, currently scheduled to start April 10th.
(more…)
The Remote Desktop Gateway server is an authentication and proxy mechanism used widely by off-site faculty, staff, and students to connect to on-site university computers using the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).  The University began blocking RDP at the border firewall in 2012 in response to an RDP security weakness.
(more…)
The mainframe computer, which UConn has used for over 30 years, was one of the only computing platforms available to the UConn community and has historically been used for administrative, academic, research, and personal computing.  ITS has been moving off the mainframe
(more…)
ITS is responsible for a broad collection of systems, services, and capabilities that in many different ways, are important to our community.  Disruptions will periodically occur as we work to maintain and evolve our infrastructure.  ITS has a Change Advisory Board (CAB) that consists of our managers and is tasked with ensuring that substantive changes to IT systems and services follow a standardized process and proceed in a transparent, orderly fashion.  This minimizes the risk of outages or other negative impacts to the community.  A key step in this process involves communicating effectively and broadly with audiences internal and external to ITS.  This crucial step increases awareness among the community of upcoming changes and prompts timely feedback.  To achieve our communication goals, ITS is now publishing scheduled changes on the
ITS CAB website
.  This new change calendar gives CAB a mechanism to effectively reach a wider audience and gives constituents more opportunity to surface concerns or to illuminate impacts that may have been overlooked.  It also leverages the built-in features of the university events system, such as providing you with the capability to add the CAB calendar to Outlook and subscribe to RSS feeds.  ITS is committed to effective collaboration; we believe that our dedicated change calendar will make it easier for us to deliver information and for you to obtain it conveniently via a mechanism of your choice.
ITS will have a two-week moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Monday, January 19, through Monday, February 2.
We understand that this time is a critical period for students and faculty as they acclimate to the new semester.  ITS will defer changes to systems and services that might have a production impact in order to minimize potential outages during this high-anxiety period.  Changes required to respond to emergent situations will be duly evaluated and pursued only if their need is significant.
UConn Software, formerly the Software Licensing Group (SLG), has a new website:
. This site lists supported products, provides pertinent policies and procedures, and includes a simple form to standardize requests for the group to consider and review softwareto be licensed.
The university group works in concert with ITS to represent community interests regarding the acquisition, distribution, and customer support of instructional, administrative, and research software products.  The core support group identifies common needs and evaluates available software products for broad applicability.  As an advisory body to the University CIO, they help ITS align its finite software spend for the best practical benefit to our community while also providing expertise and assistance on a case-by-case basis to customers.
ITS will have a moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Monday, December 8, through Thursday, December 18.
We understand that this time of year is a critical period with students and faculty trying to meet end of semester obligations.  ITS will defer changes to systems and services that might have a production impact in order to minimize potential outages during this high-anxiety period.  Changes required to respond to emergent situations will be duly evaluated and pursued only if their need is significant.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have comments, questions, or concerns.
ITS has completed a design for the university Microsoft Office 365 initiative and would like to ask for any final feedback.
Microsoft Office 365 is an organized collection of cloud-based business productivity technologies that integrates enhanced communication and collaboration tools.  It is well aligned towards individuals and their ability to personally leverage technology.  Adoption of this architecture represents a departure from the traditional way IT is centrally delivered at the University.  For this reason, ITS has pursued this project methodically and requested feedback throughout the process to ensure that the end product would be robust and also effectively meet the diverse needs of our constituents.  We have now completed a design, which is the outcome of a rigorous internal and external vetting process. You can review the design documentation on our Microsoft Office 365 website:
.  As we begin implementation planning, we ask that you send any final feedback to Josh Boggs at
josh.boggis@uconn.edu
.  Once we complete the implementation and transition project plan, we will no longer be seeking input on the des
The ITS Technology Support Center, located in the Math-Science Building M037 and on the first floor (Homer Commons) of the Homer Babbidge Library, provides first contact support and assistance to the university community for the wide variety of services provided by the organization. Our services and their associated support have historically had community centric differences based on major group affiliation (i.e., faculty, staff or student). Unfortunately, this resulted in varied customer experiences and confusion depending on how individuals approached the organization. Based on feedback from faculty, staff, and students, ITS restructured our Technology Support Center at the beginning of the semester to include a mix of HuskyTech student employees and full-time staff. This was done so that all members of our community, regardless of affiliation, would have consistent support options and, more importantly, a high-quality customer experience. These changes have allowed ITS to pursue process and resource efficiency goals while better meeting the individual needs and expectations of our customers.
The past months have validated the preliminary changes, and with your assistance, we are committed to continued development of the Technology Support Center. Your support and feedback remains key to its successful evolution, and we welcome any insights or observations you might share. Please contact Pat Meinweiser with comments, questions, or concerns.
ITS has implemented selected redesigns of the Student Administration (SA) System to address structural problems that resulted in service disruptions during the registration process.
The SA system is a hub for student information and activity and is widely used by faculty, students, staff, and alumni. They experienced numerous problems with login, authorization, kick-outs, and browser incompatibility.  These service issues were caused by firewall performance, browser connection, and application software issues.  ITS engineered network changes to increase reliability and performance and deployed a new load balancing infrastructure to improve the interaction between client browsers and the SA application.  These fixes were implemented at the beginning of October, and the peak registration cycle has now concluded without the raft of service calls that occurred at the beginning of the semester.  ITS will continue to assess the infrastructure and to make selected changes and upgrades to improve the experience of our community.
ITS is beginning a series of infrastructure enhancements that may require updating end-of-life (EOL) operating systems on devices that are connected to the network.
ITS announced this past spring and throughout the summer that Windows XP and Mac OS 10.7 were end of life and would no longer be supported.  Older operating systems are not maintained by the vendor and are increasingly difficult to operate in our environment.  We will offer possible workarounds where these exist, but ITS cannot avoid important maintenance in deference to devices with unsupported operating systems.  Unfortunately, such equipment will be increasingly unable to utilize network services over time.
We will be happy to explore options with you.  Please do not hesitate to contact us for information and assistance.
ITS is expanding its enterprise workflow services by offering web form development with IBM Forms Experience Builder (FEB).
The University currently uses many paper-based workflow processes, which can be both slow and inefficient.  Automating these processes by creating electronic workflows using traditional programming languages, however, is both difficult and time consuming.  FEB is a tool designed specifically to develop and deploy data-centric web form applications.  It is simpler to use and far faster from concept to production than older approaches.  With FEB, the Applications and Technology Solutions (ATS) group can produce better results in less time (less cost) and even add advanced functionality such as workflow stages or the ability to track and analyze results.
Additional information about FEB is available at the following location:
.  Requests for form development can be sent to
The upgraded and expanded Virtual Private Network (VPN) services, deployed on September 15th, have replaced the old VPN portal. On October 6th the old system,
vpn.uconn.edu
, will no longer be available.
The new VPN portal is accessible via the Web at
and via client software for OS X, Windows, iOS, and Android devices. When you transition to the new VPN services, be aware that you will need to re-create your personal bookmarks and that clients receive different IP addresses than the legacy system.
Additional information is available at the following location:
ITS is now in the design phase of the Microsoft Office 365 initiative. In the research phase, we received significant positive feedback with some questions and concerns from our UConn IT community.  Using this information, we produced a tentative design that was reviewed by the ITS IT Technical Partners governance body.  The architecture is now at a point where we have begun preliminary planning for an implementation.
ITS is searching for volunteers to test Office 365 and provide us with feedback about their experience.  Testers will be given a temporary account and the opportunity to get an early look at the service.  If you would like to participate, send us a message at
365@uconn.edu
with your name, netID, contact information, and position within the University.  Information about the service and the project is available at
We appreciate your patience and support as ITS continues to make progress on improving services for our faculty and staff.
ITS will deploy an updated and upgraded Virtual Private Network (VPN) service on September 15th.
VPN services have been utilized historically to provide authenticated access to the university network from remote locations and thereby allow customers to safely and securely utilize certain restricted services from outside the university.  Juniper has stopped providing support for the existing hardware, and this has produced numerous problems for our community when they use the old access client.  The new infrastructure will be current, fully supported, and consistent with contemporary approaches and re-architected to double its network bandwidth.  Web access will be available, but there are also clients for iOS, Android OS, Windows, and OS X.  We are deploying the infrastructure in a high availability configuration at two disparate locations to provide a more robust experience than the current implementation.
Additional information is available at the following location:
ITS will have a three-week moratorium on non-emergency network and system changes starting Monday, August 18, through Sunday, September 7.
We understand that the start of the fall semester is a critical period for students and faculty as they acclimate to the new school year. ITS will defer changes to systems and services that might have a production impact in order to minimize potential outages during this high-anxiety period. Changes required to respond to emergent situations will be duly evaluated and pursued only if their need is significant.
Update, 1/20/2015:
project delayed due to contract negotiations
ITS has procured the installation of dedicated fiber connections from the Torrington and Avery Point regional campuses to the Connecticut Education Network (CEN), a university and state-run regional network provider. These connections, similar to the kind recently installed to support the extension centers in Tolland and Norwich, will permit 1Gbs connectivity between the UConn Storrs campus, Torrington campus, Avery Point campus, some additional extension offices, and the Litchfield County Extension Center. Existing connectivity to the Torrington and Avery Point campuses is currently limited to 10Mbps, which is inadequate to meet either the current and projected campus needs of researchers, teachers, learners, staff, and guests. The greatly enhanced connections are scheduled to be live during UConn’s Winter Recess.
You may be used to requesting a DNS hostname from ITS, but did you know that we can give schools, departments, and colleges the authority to manage their name spaces and IP networks?
ITS maintains an integrated Domain Name System (DNS), a central repository for mapping Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHCP), a central service that assigns IP address requests and parameters required for a device to connect to a network. With delegated administration of your DNS/DHCP, you have more control over your forward and reverse DNS zones, DHCP scopes and ranges, and ability to supply/remove fixed addresses and name records. The integration of DNS/DHCP also allows you to dynamically configure network parameters for devices, like printers, which require a permanent IP address assignment and domain name.
If you would like additional information about this capability, please contact Jeff Farese, Network Design and Engineering, at
Jeffrey.Farese@uconn.edu
ITS has launched an initiative to explore a Microsoft Office 365 service offering for the University of Connecticut.
Microsoft Office 365 has the potential to enhance individual productivity and facilitate collaboration. It would provide significantly larger mailboxes, Office sharing and interaction tools, text and video chat, one terabyte of personal cloud storage, and other useful features. We are currently in the research phase of the project and will reach out to request your feedback throughout the process. Your insight and perspective will be critical to the successful development of an efficient design that maximizes the service potential for our community and an effective implementation plan that minimizes disruption during transition.
ITS and the Law School have combined our mail and calendar environments.
The university Exchange environment was intended to facilitate interaction and collaboration across our community.  Design choices and competing systems have historically made this difficult.  Over the past year, ITS has evolved the central service based on direct feedback from our IT partners.  For example, ITS and UConn Health unified our address books to simplify cross-organization scheduling.  This change was designed to increase usefulness and to encourage broader institutional adoption of the central service.  Migrating the Law School email and calendar system to our central environment benefits both the Law School and the University.  ITS will continue to improve our email and calendar service and will work with units to integrate capabilities or even combine systems.
As of June 30, 2014, ITS will no longer provide print services from the mainframe. In conjunction with the Mainframe Decommissioning Project and the University’s green initiatives, all print jobs processed on the mainframe will be directed to Control-D, an online report management tool that is currently in use by many areas.
Control-D provides the option to view reports online and print all or specific selections of the report. Users will have the option to print directly from personal computers as they do today or through
UConn’s Design & Document Production Center
If you have an existing job scheduled that produces a report and have not been contacted by ITS to determine your report distribution requirements please email us at
ITS.mainframe@uconn.edu
or call Diana O’Donnell at 860-486-1413.
ITS Mobile Solutions has hired a Graduate Assistant (GA) to support development of research-related mobile applications for faculty, a change that extends service to researchers and aligns with the academic mission of the University.
Faculty have been requesting support for mobile app development and while the demand has grown, it has remained inadequate to generate sufficient revenue to offset the expense of a dedicated position. We recognized that research teams need this support now and that the institution would be best served by creating a position. ITS will recover a portion of the operating expense from clients through hourly billing, and we will subsidize the remaining shortfall. For more information and to submit a development request, visit
ITS has added a data service option to university-owned iPads and laptops for faculty and staff who are eligible for university cellular services.
ITS Cellular Services has long supported data service and hotspot capabilities for university-owned smartphones and other dedicated hotspot devices. Hotspot allows a device to share its cellular data capabilities with a collection of other devices in its vicinity. This is not necessarily the highest performing or most convenient approach, but it is often effective and economical for modest, infrequent sharing. We have received feedback that it often does not adequately address other relevant use cases. Hotspots will continue to be supported, but the ability to add cellular data plans directly to other university-owned devices will allow the community to select mobile services that better meet their needs.
General information about mobile services and specific information about the features and rates can be obtained by navigating to
www.cellular.uconn.edu
and clicking on Types of Services.
ITS has procured Adobe Creative Cloud for students as both a download and through SkyBox.
Adobe Creative Cloud is a bundle of the most popular Adobe products (e.g., Acrobat Pro, Photoshop, etc.) obtained through an annual leasing agreement.  The normal institutional model for this Adobe bundle consists of an unlimited enterprise license for all faculty and staff with student licensing obtained as a fixed quantity add-on to the base agreement.  Adobe has not historically supported making these student licenses usable through virtualized environments.  These conditions were not a match for our needs at UConn, where not enough faculty and staff require the software to justify an enterprise site license and providing the software on SkyBox, the UConn virtualized desktop environment, is key to maximizing student access.  Working closely with university purchasing and leveraging perspective and information from the UConn technical community, ITS broke new ground with Adobe to negotiate an independent fixed license pool for students with approval to deliver it through SkyBox.  These licensing terms are unprecedented and will  significantly increase student access to the software at a nationally competitive price.  Additional details about the Adobe Creative Cloud bundle will be made broadly available before the start of the fall semester.
ITS performed successful upgrades to the data center on Saturday, May 31, 2014. During the planned outage, ITS infrastructure staff installed new equipment and performed preventative maintenance. Although some services were disrupted during the outage, access remained to the Network, e-mail, and UConn websites.
Thank you for your patience during the outage. The upgrades are part of a plan to ensure a robust infrastructure that enhances the performance and stability of ITS systems and services.
If you have any questions, please contact the ITS Technology Support Center at
serviceit.uconn.edu
ITS has implemented infrastructure changes to permit high availability capabilities for our services.
Contemporary IT system and service robustness is best accomplished through a three tier model consisting of 1) effective design and professional practices 2) high availability through infrastructure and operating diversity 3) disaster recovery as an insurance strategy using an external vendor specialist.  The first strategy has been our historical approach and the organization is actively pursuing the third strategy.  ITS has added high availability capability by implementing custom network connectivity between our primary data center in Gant and our secondary machine room in HBL.  This multi-site data center capability allows us to deliver virtualized services from two independent locations as a single extended offering.
Our primary data center in Gant will undergo disruptive upgrades to both power and environmentals this weekend that will result in a 12-18 hour loss of services from this location.  By diversifying a number of our generically consumed services between our paired data centers using our new high availability infrastructure, UTIS will be maintaining the following services without substantive interruption during the upgrades to the Gant data center.
Networking (wired and wireless)
Email (Microsoft Exchange)
Authentication (NetID, AD, Radius, CAS, etc)
Departmental web content management (Aurora)
University core websites (alert, it status, today, uconn)
Delivery from the secondary HBL location will begin almost immediately as the primary delivery location is shutdown.  Any disruption of these services during failover will be extremely brief and should be virtually unnoticed.  Outages have an increasingly disruptive impact on our community and we will continue to pursue high availability as well as other architectural and operational strategies to improve the performance and stability of ITS systems and services.
ITS has increased the sensitivity of the UCONN email spam filters to more effectively prevent the delivery of unwanted messages.
The university email challenge has always been to correctly identify and prevent the delivery of unwanted messages without misidentifying and blocking wanted messages.  Recent feedback from our community indicated that the system was permitting the delivery of too much spam.  ITS carefully assessed the service configuration and implemented adjustments this morning to improve its filtering performance.  Our tests indicate that this will safely reduce spam delivery by approximately 20%.
Please do not hesitate to contact us or the
ITS Technology Support Center
if you have questions or concerns or if you believe that your email is being blocked incorrectly.
ITS has enabled guest access to
WhatsUp
, the university network monitoring system.
ITS network technicians utilize
WhatsUp
to monitor the current status of more than 3,000 network devices in our data network.  This tool is not designed or intended to be a generally consumed service at the University, but it is possible that it might be useful for other IT professionals.  We have enabled read-only access to
WhatsUp
from any campus network.  You may login using “guest” as both the username and password.  Off campus access to this resource requires use of the University VPN service.
The six minute limit on ITS Technology Support Center phone system hold times has been discontinued.
This limit was originally created to address feedback pertaining to long holds, but it has become clear that it is not the optimal way to deal with this issue and it has the unintended side effect of forcibly disconnecting people who might have preferred to continue holding.  ITS wants to make it easier for the community to access help resources, and so callers on hold will be periodically prompted with three options:
Leave a message
Create a ticket through
ServiceIT
Continue to hold
ITS will continue our review of help desk processes to increase call throughput, but in the interim we believe that the range of options above will better meet the different needs of individual callers.
There will be a two-week ITS moratorium on network and system changes starting today, Friday, May 2, through Friday, May 16.
We understand that this time of year is a critical period with students and faculty trying to meet end of semester obligations.  ITS has imposed significant restrictions on changes to systems and services that might have a production impact in order to minimize potential outages during this high anxiety period.  Changes required to respond to emergent situations will be duly evaluated and pursued only if their need is significant.
There are a number of general phone and email contact points that provide access to ITS groups and / or services. When submitting a help or service request, we encourage everyone to contact the organization through either the Technology Support Center or one of the local Service Areas. However, we have received feedback that these mechanisms are not always helpful when trying to contact specific individuals. Now we’re changing that.
ITS is now aggressively ensuring that individual phone numbers and email addresses will be properly available in the University’s
online phone book
. We will also maintain a staff directory, as we want the community to be able to easily contact us at both the organizational and individual level for all of their IT needs.
ITS has added authentication support to its Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server, resulting in more flexibility and convenience for SMTP users.
Customers that utilize Outlook and Exchange for email already take advantage of authenticated access for outgoing emails, but our generally available SMTP server has not historically supported authenticated access. A consequence of this is that ITS blocks access from off-campus locations to the SMTP server when sending emails. This limitation has required laptops that access the SMTP server directly from off-campus locations to either have a separate configuration using a different SMTP server or to utilize the University’s Virtual Private Network (VPN) when sending email. Enabling authentication capabilities on the SMTP server allows ITS to fully support direct access to the SMTP server from areas outside of our network, limiting complexity and potentially reducing the support needs of our community.
Mail clients configured to utilize smtp.uconn.edu directly can use SMTP authentication through either SSL on port 465 or STARTTLS on port 587. The authentication credentials are simply your NetID and password. Outlook or other clients that use Exchange directly will not require reconfiguration and adjustment
they will simply continue to operate as they do now.
For assistance on configuring ports for SMTP Authentication, users can contact the ITS Technology Support Center by submitting a ticket at
ITS has procured an InCommon Certificate Service for the University in response to the recent Heartbleed exploit in the OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This service allows us to generate, for all UConn Domains, an unlimited number of certificates (e.g., SSL, extended validation, client, and code signing) that are validated by a trusted Certificate Authority.
Technical staff across the Institution aggressively responded to the recent Heartbleed exploit and updated University servers. Heartbleed attacked an OpenSSL vulnerability in order to obtain private data. It is possible that some certificates were compromised and it would be wise to replace any that might have been exposed. You may replace your certificates at no departmental cost by using the ITS fully subsidized InCommon Certificate Service.
Additional information on the new service can be found at
The SafeConnect environment has provided a number of operating and management benefits to the university. It has, however, also generated a significant number of support problems for the community. ITS recently deployed a new version of the environment. It did not adequately address the long-standing support challenges and, after careful consideration of the product and based on direct feedback from the community, it has been permanently disabled. ITS will pursue other, less intrusive, approaches to replace the capabilities that SafeConnect previously provided.
The SafeConnect client that is currently installed on computers will no longer prevent access to the university network and it may be uninstalled at your convenience. If no action is taken, it will automatically uninstall itself after approximately six months of inactivity.
The IT Partners program is a streamlined governance structure consisting of three standing committees that are organized to provide clear roles, to prevent overlapping effort, and to align participants to focus areas. They provide oversight of University Information Technology and Services (ITS) systems and services and are advisory to the University CIO regarding the efficacy of existing or proposed central IT initiatives.
View the governance structure on the IT Strategy website at
itstrategy.uconn.edu/governance-structure
The following is an announcement from the CIO.
Colleagues,
I am contacting you to provide an update on the ongoing discussions between ITS and SAIT regarding opportunities for integration. The goal of these discussions has been to provide the best practical outcome for the community, and it has become clear that HuskyTech’s excellent service and support to the student community would be complimentary to other ITS support services. Effective March 31, 2014, HuskyTech will report to Pat Meinweiser. Please join me in welcoming this enthusiastic and effective group to the ITS family.
As always, you are encouraged to contact me if you have questions or concerns.
Regards.
Michael.
Michael R. Mundrane, Ph.D.
Vice Provost for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer
University of Connecticut