Information Technology Services updates winter 2019
New/emerging/changing services
The Enterprise Systems and Applications (ESA) group remains poised to resume the nursing online program once the New York State Department of Education approves at least the second of six submitted curricula for the program. In the interim, ESA resumed work on other projects that were delayed as we prepared the nursing online program.
A long-awaited project — Chosen Name — is coming to closure within the next month or so. Starting in early 2020, Binghamton University will allow students or employees to identify a chosen first name, in addition to their legal name, in Binghamton University information systems. Chosen names will be displayed in lieu of the legal name in end-user facing systems that do not have a legal requirement to use a legal name. Binghamton University students and employees must still be able to provide government-issued identification with their legal name where and when required. Implementing this project was a significant undertaking due to the multiple complex systems that are being modified to accommodate and continually updated with chosen names.
Members of the ESA group along with members of the Operations and Infrastructure group assisted Transportation and Parking Services (TAPS) during its installation and customization of the new paid parking system (HUB). The installation occurred at the beginning of the semester and required significant ITS involvement to ensure the success of this service upgrade to the University.
ESA completed a full system upgrade of the Banner Document Imaging system (xTender) Dec. 15-19. xTender is used by almost every Banner user on campus. The upgrade was installed on new servers and improves system performance with new features for our users. This upgrade required significant behind-the-scenes work to ensure the upgrade was totally invisible to our users with zero service interruption time.
ESA completed several key modifications to the immunization portion of the Medicat system for Decker Student Health Services. We now have a real-time update to the Banner health holds table that reflects when a student’s Medicat immunization record is updated. Also, ESA completed the installation and configuration for the Medicat interface computer to the New York State Immunization Information System and UHS hospitals. This connects Decker Student Health Services with the NYSIIS and UHS hospitals to allow for real-time updates into Medicat without the need to submit forms for each immunization that a student or prospective student receives. This system will save time and reduces the data entry error rate for recording immunizations. These changes enable students to register and complete other campus functions that might otherwise be delayed due to an immunization hold condition.
ESA set up a sharing schema on the Pharmacy Health Outcomes configuration that allows for restricted data to be shared among our pharmacy researchers in a read-only fashion. This enhanced feature allows them to create results folders and needed work space while they perform experiments.
Utilizing KnowBe4 software, the Information Security Team customized several security training modules for all staff and faculty. The modules focused on email security concepts and tips to avoid phishing schemes. The modules were distributed to all staff and faculty in early November; to date, over 25% of the staff and faculty have completed the training. In addition to the KnowBe4 training modules for the staff and faculty, the ITS Communication team initiative led by Steve Palmer did an anti-phishing campaign in the University Union Tillman Lobby directed to informing students. Over the course of several tabling sessions, almost 100 students stopped to discuss their phishing awareness. This was the first time ITS had tabled about email security and anti-phishing concepts there. We expect to continue this direct communication venue with students in addition to other venues presently utilized (Dateline, B-Line, posters, RESCONS, flyers on tables, etc.).
The Information Security team averages 150 DMCA (Digital Music Copyright Act) complaints and over 540 other security issues every three months. Each complaint necessitates thorough investigation and remediation and quite often necessitates involving other IT support personnel and has at times required assistance from the campus attorney.
To help users better identify potential phishing or other malicious emails, ITS took a proactive step to further identify emails that come from sources external to the University. On Jan. 2, 2020, all in-bound email from external sources will have the [EXTERNAL EMAIL] identifier added at the beginning of a subject title. Extensive testing of the addition of [EXTERNAL EMAIL] to the subject line of email received from external sources has been completed. The added email labeling helps users quickly identify if the email is from a valid binghamton.edu email address or from another email provider. This feature is just another level of increased security/user awareness, all designed to help reduce the number of phishing victims here at Binghamton.
Working closely with Purchasing, the Information Security Team has become an integral part of the approval process for procuring all cloud software. Contracts and data-use agreements have been forwarded to Steve Safranek, interim director of information security, and now to Mike Behun, our new CISO and director of information security, and his team for evaluation of data privacy and HECVAT (Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit) concerns prior to approving for purchase. This added step in the purchasing process is designed to ensure compliance of data security concerns and avoidance of data privacy or HECVAT violations.
Upgrades to technical infrastructure
The ITS systems team installed over 334 patches or updates for Banner systems in the past three months. It is important to note that each Banner patch or update requires significant testing from all the offices affected, such as Admissions. The coordination and teamwork between ITS staff and all offices is crucial in maintaining critical systems such as Banner.
ITS staff completed another 26 projects in the past three months, totaling 63 projects thus far this fiscal year, and is actively working on 61 projects with another 45 waiting for resources (staff available, equipment, vendor support, etc.) and 15 projects on hold. Demand for ITS support continues with 290 project requests submitted in the prior two fiscal years (111 in 2017 and 179 in 2018), of which 188 were completed (97 in 2017 and 91 in 2018).
ITS has assumed control of the Data Center space in the basement of the School of Pharmacy building at the Johnson City Health Sciences Campus. This data center is all part of the ITS data/system redundancy plan. We will be populating critical redundant systems in this area in the near term. The increased redundancy supports the ITS disaster recovery plan and our ability to maintain continuous operations separate from our main campus.
ITS support to the University
The Emerging Technologies Studio (ETS) conducted 52 workshops and training seminars for students and staff on how to utilize 3D printers and other capabilities of ETS. Additionally, the ETS staff oversaw or assisted with over 350 prints for 2,500 hours of 3D printing during the fall semester. One note of success is that the ETS staff was able to custom 3D print special ‘ceiling clips’ used in University buildings with older ceilings. Physical Facilities had been looking for economical alternative solutions as replacement ‘ceiling clips’ for years. The 3D printed ceiling clips look identical to the original clips and blend into the ceiling better than the original clips or any replacement solution found thus far, and they cost less!
The Help Desk received almost 2,200 calls for assistance and opened almost 4,700 incidents in Service Now during this quarter. Assistance ranged from a simple password re-set to servicing a laptop. Top requests for assistance were Blackboard, compromised accounts, University-owned computers, passwords, BMail, phishing scams and personal network drive. Additionally, Help Desk staff scanned and scored almost 280 academic tests in the past three months. Student printing for the fall term was up with almost 3 million B&W pages and over 103,000 color pages printed.
Operations and Infrastructure staff continue to work on several key capital projects such as the renovation of Cleveland Hall, Engineering Building, Hinman Dining Hall, 48 Corliss Ave. in Johnson City, and the physics area of Science 2. The ITS area in the School of Pharmacy building basement has been completed with the alternate data center area ready for equipment installation.
Smaller projects, yet just as critical, were the installation of high-density wireless service in the Mandela Room, repairs to the Distributed Antenna System in Dickinson and completing the DAS installation in Broome Hall, procurement and installation of six Morse Watchman key boxes in each residential community, installing a Morse Watchman key box in TAPS, designing CCTV/Speaker systems for the following buildings (Science 2, 48 Corliss, Institute for Child Development, University Union basement and Science 4), upgrading door-access management software (Genetec) on client machines (Johnson City Police, main campus University Police and Health Sciences Campus University Police), TAPS and any other entity using the client. All of this work is on schedule.
Kudos
ITS had three employees attend and graduate from the Leadership Development Program: Doug Russell, Jason Stoeckel and Keith Hall; and two individuals receive Bearcat awards: Jeff Ramsay and Devon Lash. Tim Cortesi and Adam Smallcomb presented Graphene at the recent Student Information and Campus Administration Systems (SICAS) Conference.