{"id":5946,"date":"2023-05-08T20:56:50","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T03:56:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/?p=5946"},"modified":"2023-05-08T20:59:18","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T03:59:18","slug":"april-2023-update-from-cis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/2023\/05\/08\/april-2023-update-from-cis\/","title":{"rendered":"April 2023 Update from CIS"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Face at CIS<\/b>
\nOur newest technical analyst, Gaylord Fajardo, joined the User Support Services team on April 10.\u00a0 Gaylord is a very experienced technician with many years of work in different companies and institutions.\u00a0 He came to us from Allergan \/ Abbvie Pharmaceuticals.\u00a0 We are delighted to welcome him to CIS and Harvey Mudd!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Wifi<\/b>
\n\"theTo the person who wrote \u201cthe Wifi here sucks\u201d on the Shanahan chalkwall, we feel your pain.\u00a0 It\u2019s our pain too.\u00a0 Here\u2019s a very high level view of the current status.\u00a0 Again, there are the access points (white boxes on the ceiling) and the controllers (servers).\u00a0 And each has software.\u00a0 Software has versions.\u00a0 And that leads to the situation.\u00a0 Several campuses upgraded to handle new access points (e.g. at HMC the Shanahan building).\u00a0 We all started to see subtle issues, affecting some people but not others. CMC has reverted back to older controllers, Pomona is still on the old software.\u00a0 Scripps has the newest software but is still seeing some issues.\u00a0 Many pieces of evidence point to things being more stable on the older software, yet Cisco wants us to upgrade to new controllers and the new software.\u00a0 HMC\u2019s newer access points mean that we can\u2019t revert to the older software for all buildings, but we intend to do that for some buildings after Commencement (Sprague, McGregor, Kingston, Galileo, Atwood, Case, Linde, South, North, Sontag).\u00a0 The CIS staff and their teammates at TCCS IT have been\u00a0 working this issue for all they are worth, eliminating hypotheses and simplifying things as much as possible. They have also been talking with Cisco, trying to get them to understand that our evidence seems to point to there being issues with the new software (I mentioned the bug last time). \u00a0 We will make a big push to get this straightened out as soon as we are past Commencement.\u00a0 I don\u2019t agree with the person who wrote \u201cget over it\u201d on the chalkwall: we have to get this fixed.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kuali Build<\/b>
\nOn the brighter side, our roll out of Kuali Build has been going well.\u00a0 Prof Kathy VanHeuvelen has been kindly forwarding effusive praise from the faculty who are using the new Summer Research forms.\u00a0 And we will soon launch an electronic Tuition Payment Agreement with Student Accounts.\u00a0 Then we can get to a more general roll out, so people can design their own forms.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Canvas<\/b>
\nAs you know we ran an exploration of Canvas with 11 faculty and 13 courses during the Spring 2023 semester. The exploration went well; feedback from faculty and students has been quite good. The ARCS team met with each faculty member to help them migrate their content from Sakai into Canvas and set up their course site.\u00a0 We are still working on our transition plan, including with a company that moves sites from Sakai to Canvas.\u00a0 And Elizabeth has asked faculty teaching summer courses if they would be interested in using Canvas instead of Sakai.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most faculty who participated in the spring semester reported feeling comfortable using Canvas within a week, and students prefer it. We encountered no showstoppers. I encourage you to consider using Canvas this summer instead of Sakai since we will be continuing the transition in the Fall, with the aim of having everyone moved off of Sakai by the end of Spring 2024. All of the other undergraduate colleges have now signed up to use Canvas, although plans are proceeding at different paces at each College.<\/span><\/p>\n

Google Workspace Storage<\/b>
\nNot much news this month, but it doesn\u2019t hurt to remind you that Spring cleaning would be a good idea. Google has some good advice about <\/span>how to clean up your own stuff<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 And you can <\/span>view your own storage information.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0 Some have asked if they can have more space.\u00a0 For now, we are watching the storage and moving people up to the next tier once they get close (about 5GB) to their current limit, so you don\u2019t have to ask.\u00a0 We haven\u2019t worked out a long term approach to storage quotas yet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Improving Duo security<\/b>
\nWe need to improve the security of Duo.\u00a0 \u201cBut wait, Joseph, when CIS rolled out Duo, you told us that multif-actor authentication (MFA) is very secure!\u201d\u00a0 I did indeed say that, and I stand by it.\u00a0 MFA (something you know + something you have) is more secure than one factor, but not all\u00a0 factors are the same. In particular, SMS text and voice calls have become\u00a0 less secure as a second factor. \u00a0 \u201cBad\u00a0 actors\u201d can now buy cheap kits that will allow them to intercept SMS messages or voice calls.\u00a0 The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) put it this way <\/span>in 2017<\/b>:\u00a0 <\/span>\u201c<\/span>you can use this puppy for now, but it\u2019s on its way out<\/span><\/a>.\u201d <\/span>\u00a0If you use Twitter, Apple or Microsoft you may already have been moved off of SMS.\u00a0 CIS plans to do the same at HMC in the summer. \u00a0 More details to come, but if you can get yourself off SMS and voice calls for your second factor now, please do so.\u00a0 (<\/span>CIS service catalog entry on Duo<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

Seniors<\/b>
\nEvery now and then, students wander up to the fifth floor of Sprague to take in the spectacular views on all four sides (but especially toward the mountains on the north side, which have been particularly lovely of late).\u00a0 Seniors, this week is your last chance to do so as a student, and we\u2019re happy to welcome you!<\/span><\/p>\n

Tips and Tricks<\/b>
\nWe received some good feedback about last month\u2019s tip, so here are two more:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The April 4 Bite of Learning \u201c<\/span>After the Research is Over: Communicating your Scholarship<\/span><\/a>\u201d was full of interesting bits about services the library provides.\u00a0 I made a note to myself\u00a0 \u201cFaculty need to know about these library resources\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Want to quickly and easily view PDFs without logging into an Adobe account (and having to update)?\u00a0 Set your pdf viewer tool to be the <\/span>Apple Preview App<\/span><\/a>, Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.\u00a0 You won\u2019t be able to edit the pdf in those Apps, but that\u2019s a less common use case.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    On behalf of everyone at CIS, I wish you a smooth and festive end to the Spring 2023 semester!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    New Face at CIS Our newest technical analyst, Gaylord Fajardo, joined the User Support Services team on April 10.\u00a0 Gaylord […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-cis","category-cioupdates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5946"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5949,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5946\/revisions\/5949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hmc.edu\/cis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}