ITS Newsletter

Welcome to the ITS Newsletter, a quarterly communication to Bethel computing community.

In this issue you'll find:

• Banner News:  An update on the Banner migration.
  
• Employee Article: Protecting yourself and your computer- identify theft and spyware
  
• Faculty Consultant Article: Anit-Plagerism Tool, Blackboard Tip, and class surveys via Flashlight
  
• News from the V.P. Bill Doyle: Network Security Fever
  
• Questions to the Help Desk:  I accidently deleted my network file. How can I get it back?.
• Server/Network News: An overview of Bethel's email
  
• Security News: Locking your computer to prevent unauthorited access
  
• Student News: Malware: The Unpleasant Residue Left on Computers by the Internet
  

Increased Bandwidth Means Faster Internet

On February 27, 2006, Bethel University increased its bandwidth 40 percent (from 15 to 21 megabits). The result should be faster access to the Internet, especially from the residence halls. We will enjoy this larger capacity until the end of May when most students vacate the residence halls. At that time, our bandwidth will be reduced to 9 megabits, an amount comfortably adequate for the greatly reduced need during the summer months. In September we will boost the bandwidth for 9 months to 25 megabits followed by another reduction at the end of May 2007 to 10 megabits.

This strategy, enabling us to utilize our budget for Internet access much more efficiently, became possible only recently when we leased a fiber connection to a major telecommunications hub in Minneapolis. This is a serendipitous outcome of our strategy to connect to Internet II, which was completed last May. Until now, the cost of changing bandwidth twice per year would have been prohibitive. The increase from 21 to 25 megabits in September 2006 will be possible due to an annual increase in our Internet budget as specified in our current strategic plan for IT.

We are especially hopeful that this new strategy will provide noticeable improvement in the speed of access from our residence halls. While we have no commitment to providing Internet speeds sufficient for recreational computing, we do want to enable reasonable response times for student activity in support of their academic programs.

Original article at:

http://www.bethel.edu/bethel-news/intra/2006/02-28-06-increased-bandwidth

March 2006 Update:

Bethel began implementing Banner software on August 25, 2005.  Staff members are often attending training sessions two or more weeks per month.  Specific module training is well underway for the Finance module, Financial Aid module, Student module (including both Admissions and Registrar functions), and Human Resources module.  Cross-departmental teams have been analyzing the business processes in many offices and reporting needs are being documented. 

The go live date for the Finance module is June 1.  After that date the Business and Purchasing Offices will be working in Banner and not CARS.  Other dates when modules are scheduled to go live include Student Admissions in late August of this year, Human Resources on January 1 of 2007, Financial Aid also on January 1, followed by Registrar on April 1, Student Accounts/Self Service on July 1, and Advancement also on July 1.

Users accessing the Internet from a Bethel computer - did you know?

If left on and unlocked without a password, did you know that others can get to not only your files and email but possibly your pay-check and other important information? Scared? You probably should be. Here are some simple things you can do to protect yourself and your data.

• Hit ctrl-alt-del and return to quickly lock your computer.
• Never click on the save password options when you see it comes up. Saving your password, allows others to gain access to your computer and access your personal information.
• Be wary of free software, such as games and utilities. Often free software includes spyware which will cause havoc on your computers
• Phishing scams are emails appearing to be from a trusted organization requesting personal information.  They often link to bogus websites created to look like the organization that they are trying to masquarade as.
  
• If you were not expecting the email, do not click on the link; instead access the organization’s website with a web browser by typing in their main address.
• Email from individuals you know may not actually be coming from the individual as it could be generated through a computer worm.

A new anti-plagiarism tool: have you set-up your Turnitin account?

As of last January, CAS has a subscription to Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism site to which faculty can submit papers to be checked for plagiarism.

Turnitin checks a paper against the whole public internet and every paper that was ever submitted to it.

Lately, it has added some library data bases against which it checks also. They are:

• Gale InfoTrac OneFile database. You can find more info at http://www.gale.com/onefile/
• 3 ProQuest databases:
• ABI Inform
• Business Dateline
• Periodical Abstracts

For help to get going on Turnitin, contact Lucie Johnson at johluc@bethel.edu

Note:  To use Turnitin, you need an electronic copy of the paper. Have your students submit to you an electronic copy of their paper using Blackboard.

Submitting papers through Blackboard: a much better way than the dropbox

Create an assignment instead.

• Go to the control panel of your course and click on the content area of your choice. Then go to the drop-down menu on the upper right (it most likely reads "Learning Unit)
• Scroll down and select "assignment", click the "GO" button
• Fill in the title, points, instructions, and submit.

(more detailed instructions at http://www.bethel.edu/its/is/teaching-technology/blackboard/adding-assignments.html )

As you did this, an entry was automatically created in the gradesheet.  Papers are now accessible through the grade sheet. You can download them all at once in a ZIP file and submit the zipfile to Turnitin all at once if you wish.

Wanting to do a survey? Use FLASHLIGHT.

Flashlight allows you to send a survey to the world at large, as well as Bethel people. Bethel has a subscription to this product, which resides on a University of Washington server.

For a Flashlight account, or info about Flashlight, contact Lucie Johnson at johluc@bethel.edu

Dr. William Doyle
Vice President of Information Technology Services

Network-Security Fever

At an Educause conference in the fall of 2004 I attended a general session featuring Richard Clark, a security consultant and former security advisor to the White House. He said that if higher education institutions do not soon implement better network-security procedures, the federal government will step in and mandate its own security prescription that would likely create great frustration. Indeed, the federal government has already released a series of mandates that have significantly impacted education and the business community including Gramm-Leach-Bliley, Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA), Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), and Sarbanes/Oxley. Bethel has until mid April to comply with HIPAA, an act that has required long hours of extra effort from a committee very capably led by Cara Wald. When finished, this group will have authored about 50 security documents. You have recently been introduced to one HIPAA stipulation that requires secure screensaver activation or automated logout based upon the length of inactivity on our computers. We will also soon introduce another requirement to strengthen our passwords.

The many recent high-profile, campus-security breaches through which credit card and social security numbers have been compromised are cause for concern. These types of events lead Clark to believe that federal authorities may create even more security mandates. While Bethel IT allocates considerable resources to keep our servers patched and our overall network secure, all users have responsibility for the security of the university’s computer network. Fortunately, use of common sense goes a long way toward creating a secure environment. Choosing good passwords, not writing them down, not sharing them with anyone (not even family members, colleagues, and TA’s), not storing sensitive information on notebooks that are easily stolen and compromised, and not walking away from office computers on which we have logged in are obvious but important examples of common-sense behavior with which we must all comply.

ITS understands the tradeoff between security measures and convenience. We will engage our advisory committees (Information Technology Academic Advisory Committee and Information Technology Administrative Advisory Group) to help Bethel define and move toward an acceptable position on the security continuum. Please talk with me or any committee member if you have questions, concerns, or recommendations.

Finally, I want to inform you of a very troubling development with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). CALEA was enacted in 1994 to ensure that telephone companies design and operate their networks in a manner that allows law-enforcement agencies to install wiretaps pursuant to court orders or other legal authorization. As a result of 9/11 and the finding that terrorists now almost exclusively use the Internet for communication, federal authorities intend to extend this act to Internet Service Providers, including higher-education institutions. The goal is to be able remotely and instantaneously to monitor network communication to and from a site (say Bethel), including intra-campus communication. The dollar cost to Bethel is unknown (required equipment does not currently exist), but is estimated to be at least $200,000. Education organizations have unsuccessfully lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), requesting that we be able to implement the required changes over time as current network equipment is routinely replaced. Therefore, a group of higher-education organizations, led by Educause and the American Council on Education, filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals to block the FCC from proceeding. Briefs were filed on January 26, and oral argument on the case is scheduled for May. There is hope that the court will issue a ruling by August. In the meantime the clock is ticking toward the compliance date of April, 2007, and our security temperature has become quite elevated.

I accidently deleted a file that I need from my Network folder.  How can I get it back?

Recovery of Network Files or Folders

Shadow Copy is a feature running on the server BSP-NAS that allows Windows users to restore network files and folders.  Users can quickly and easily perform the recovery instead of the server team for recently deleted, overwritten or corrupted network files and folders.

Important: Recovery of files and folders using Shadow copy is generally limited to the past two days.  In addition there may be times when previous versions may not be available due to server issues. If there are no previous versions available, then you will need to contact the helpdesk to have the server team perform the restore from tapeback.

Recovering a Deleted File To recover a deleted file: Navigate to the folder in which the deleted file had been stored. Position the cursor over a blank area in the folder. Right-click the mouse and select Properties from the bottom of the menu. Select the Previous Versions tab. Select the version of the folder that contains the file before it was deleted, and then click View. View the folder and select the file that will be recovered. Drag and drop, or cut and paste, the shadow copy to the desktop or the original folder from which you selected to restore a previous version. You may have to shrink and move the two windows in order to see them simultaneously.

Edited from the orginal ITS Knowledge Base article at http://knowledgebase.its.bethel.edu/articles/206/

Do you have a "How do I....?" ITS question that you think the rest of Bethel would benefit from having answered here in the ITS Newsletter?  If so, email your suggestion to the helpdesk with the subject "Newsletter Question" or click here helpdesk@bethel.edu

Automatic Lock and Logoff Policy

Due to several new laws [Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act (HIPAA),  Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB), and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA)], Bethel is required to establish several policies concerning the security of our electronic data.

Although the HIPAA Security deadline (April 2006) is the primary driver behind these policy changes, industry best practices and rising concerns over identity theft are other motivators behind these changes.

Why does this impact my area if I do not handle electronic protected health information (EPHI)?

• Although individuals with malicious intent may not gain access to HIPAA information, they may gain access to your personal information, such as your paycheck, and FERPA information. The goal is to protect all personally identifiable information.
  
  
• Roles change so it is more efficient and effective to establish a baseline for data security for all employees at Bethel.
  
  
• If appropriate security mechanisms are not in place, those with malicious intent can use non-HIPAA related access to gain access unlawfully to HIPAA information.

For all employees, effective April 20, 2006, the following will become effective and automatically managed by ITS for all users except those using a Macintosh computer. Macintosh users must set their computers to the appropriate lock or logoff timeframe listed below: Directions for Macintosh OS X computers are available at:

http://knowledgebase.its.bethel.edu/articles/354/

1. Public Bethel-owned workstations (e.g. kiosks, computer labs, etc.) must logoff after 15 minutes of inactivity. This is the current policy.
   
   
2. Bethel-owned workstations in non-public areas (e.g. computers inside offices) must lock after 30 minutes of inactivity. Programs running in the background continue to run during this lockout period. To unlock your machine, press control-alt-delete and enter your password.
   
   
3. Bethel-owned shared workstations must logoff or lock after 15-30 minutes of inactivity. The method chosen by the department head will depend on the situation surrounding the shared workstation, with the default being set at logoff by ITS. The timing will be chosen by the HIPAA Security Taskforce and will be dependent on access to EPHI. Those shared workstations with very limited access to EPHI may have a longer logoff or lock timeframe, not to exceed 30 minutes.
   
   
4. Bethel-owned faculty instructional workstations will logoff after 60 minutes of inactivity. This is the current policy.

Effective April 20, 2006, employees authorized to access EPHI (e.g. Human Resources, Business Office, ITS, and Health Service), must begin activating their locking software (press control-alt-delete and click “lock computer”) on any workstation whenever leaving the workstation’s immediate physical proximity.

Employees who are not authorized access to EPHI are encouraged to activate their locking software on any workstation whenever leaving the workstation’s immediate physical proximity.

It is also important to note that when accessing Bethel data from a personal machine, appropriate precautions must be taken; employees can be personally liable for security breaches of Bethel data when using any machine, personal or Bethel-owned, if the employee has not taken appropriate precautions to protect the data.

Questions concerning this policy can be directed to Dave Holter at ext. 6414 or Cara Wald at ext. 6232.

Email at Bethel

Information Technology Services (ITS) provides several different options with respect to supported email clients and access method.

Bethel staff may choose either the native Windows Outlook client or the Outlook web client to interact with the Exchange environment.  Faculty, may use either Outlook Express 6 for the PC or Entourage for the Mac in conjunction with Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) or use our open-sourced base Open Webmail system. Lastly, students , alumni, emeriti, and retirees must use the Open Webmail system to access their Bethel email.

ITS does not support other email clients, however we do provide the configuration parameters that are typically needed to set them up.  Specifically, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server for outgoing mail should be set to smtp.bethel.edu. IMAP should be used as the protocol for retrieving incoming mail. Faculty and students should set their IMAP server to imap.bethel.edu, while staff should use the IMAP server mail.admin.bethel.edu. Take note that the only supported client platform with Exchange is Outlook via the Messaging Application
Programming Interface (MAPI). All interaction with Exchange via IMAP would be via non-supported clients.

It is important to note that while ITS does provide a Post Office Protocol (POP) server to retrieve incoming mail, the use of IMAP rather than POP is strongly encouraged. In particular, POP is
incompatible with Open Webmail since it will download email off of the mail server to whatever client machine is being used. This prevents the management of email in a central repository.

More detailed technical information, as well as specific instructions for configuring the supported email clients can be found in the following KnowledgeBase article:

http://kb.its.bethel.edu/articles/48/

Malware: The Unpleasant Residue Left on Computers by the Internet

Malicious programs like viruses and spyware are now referred to as malware, which is short for malicious software. Malware has become increasingly sophisticated and in some cases virtually impossible to detect or remove from an infected computer. Many of us have already encountered some type of malware on our computer. In fact, according to a recent PEW Internet and the American Life Project report, 59 million American adults indicated they encountered spyware on their personal computers. More information about this and how the Internet impacts families can be found at:

http://www.pewinternet.org/

All computers are at risk for malware problems, but those computers using Microsoft Windows are the most vulnerable and the most targeted. Microsoft has responded to this with an informational website located at:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security

Additionally, Microsoft provides an E-newsletter addressing security issues for home computer users and you can sign up for it at:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/secnews

Keeping your computer free of malware requires a multi-faceted approach. Microsoft’s website is an excellent starting point to gain knowledge as you develop a strategy for keeping your computer clean and free “Internet residue.”