A classroom in Kotoraya

The advances in technology that have enabled us to provide the ‘Reading in a box’ solution are quite something, as we are using ‘thin client’ desktop hardware and the telephone system is Voice Over IP (VOIP). The former allows us to maintain the systems centrally and the latter means that you can call someone in Malaysia as if they are on the main University Campuses here in the United Kingdom.

Reading in a box

Back home, work has begun on identifying and collecting a range of performance data which will help  IT Services to demonstrate the quality and reliability of the services that we provide. This work is still in its early stages, but some useful data has started to be gathered. In addition to measuring outputs such as systems availability, IT has begun to collect information from customers about their satisfaction with the response to issues reported to the Help Service. The first month’s data (March 2012) has now been collated and is as an early example of this qualitative feedback:

Satisfaction Survey Results - March 2012

Work is also continuing on developing the IT Services Operating Plan and our draft Plan identifies a number of internal service objectives which will help us support the new University Strategy. These include:

• Strengthening project and portfolio management disciplines within ITS
• Review of and improvements to core business processes within ITS, and to adopt ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) best practice where possible
• Strengthening the capacity of ITS support teams by enabling cross-training and more flexible deployment of people within all technical support disciplines
• Improvements to the communication between  ITS,  Faculties, Schools, Departments and Students
• Ensure that core network and data centre capacity is reviewed and updated regularly
• Review opportunities for efficiency savings arising from developments in cloud computing services

Work on these will continue to keep us busy as we head into the summer period and further into the year and I will do my best to keep you informed of our progress. As always, if you would like to contact me about any of these matters or developments, please feel free to do so.

John

Our concerns have been addressed, so we’re happy to release Sophos 8.0.3 onto the University Mac family. This will happen this week and with no user intervention required. When it happens you’ll notice a larger update than normal and the GUI is more in keeping with OS X.

Hardware requirements for Sophos 8 are identical as for Sophos 7 and we would recommend a reboot afterwards at your convenience.

What do you gain? Other than the better GUI you now get the “Live Protection” module which Windows users have been enjoying for a while.

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/why-sophos/innovative-technology/live-protection.aspx

While we’re on the subject on Mac security please ensure that your departmental Mac OS X and iOS devices are fully patched as there is a lot of Mac malware around at at the moment, e.g. Flashback (an OS X botnet comprising an estimated 600,000 Macs). Please note that Apple are only patching you if you’re on 10.5 Leopard or later.

http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/05/14/apple-lion-security-updates-malware/

We would like to remind you that Sophos Antivirus protection is free for use at home by all University staff and University students. This does not include other people living in the same house.

However, if you’re a Mac user then Sophos is free for *everyone*:

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx

If you have any further questions, please contact its-help@reading.ac.uk

All students should have already received a notification about the changes as part of the consumer service and those who have already made use of their SkyDrives are entitled to a free upgrade back to 25GB of storage space for a limited time. Microsoft have also made available an app for accessing SkyDrive from Windows and Apple iOS based smartphones.

There’s a “Manage Storage” link on the bottom of the left-hand menu that’ll take you straight to the place to do the ‘upgrade’ if the main SkyDrive bit doesn’t prompt to do so.

IT Services would like to remind you that the University of Reading does not recommend the use of SkyDrive for storage of coursework and personal data as per the readingLive webpage on this.

If you have completed your course and are leaving this summer, then your IT username/emailaddress will be blocked soon after the end of July 2012.

After this time you will be unable to access your University username, email and files stored on your network drive (drive N:) or any files you may have saved on your SkyDrive.

You can set up your username to forward any new email delivered to your University email address to a private email address for a minimum of 6 months after your account is completed.

If you have used your University email address to register for any external services, we advise that you update these.  For example for recruitment websites or your CV.

Files and old email that you wish to keep should be copied from your account before it is disabled.

See the “What Should I do next?” section below for advice on how to do this.

If you are returning to the University for another course or requiring an extension to your username, see important information in the section below.

What Should I do next?

Email Forwarding

Email forwarding MUST be set up before your university username is disabled. This forwarding will be active for a minimum of 6 months before it is removed.

Please note: Your forwarding information cannot be edited once your university username has been disabled and you will not be able to access your university mailbox.

Instructions on how to forward your email from readingLive please vist the page below:

readingLive Forwarding email

Instructions on how to forward your email from Webmail please visit the page below:

https://www.mailopts.reading.ac.uk/

Files and archived email

You should ensure that you have taken copies of any files/emails that you wish to keep. Once your university username has been disabled, you will need permission from your department to retrieve files.

For information on taking your email with you, please see:

For readingLive – IMAP configuration information for readingLive

For Webmail – Webmail – Saving and Transferring (pdf)

For information on how to copy your files to CD, please see our documentation at:

Writing to CD (pdf)

(CD writers are available in most University PC facilities managed by IT Services, including S@IL)

Blackboard Content System

Please ensure that you have taken copies of any files you have stored in your ‘Fileshare’ tab and downloaded any portfolios you have created.

(see the previous section for instructions on how to copy files to CD)

It should be noted that some users have unfortunately experienced problems with the portfolio download facility in the past. These may not apply to you but if you should encounter such problems yourself, please contact Guy Pursey (g.i.s.pursey@reading.ac.uk) for assistance.

For any queries about your Blackboard content please contact elearning-support@reading.ac.uk

Students returning for a new course

Your existing account will be disabled and students returning to a new course in October will receive new details including a University username on registering for their new course. The new details will be used to access ITS facilities and have a new email address.

Students requiring extended academic access

If you require your University username after the end of July 2012 for academic work, please ask your tutor/supervisor to contact IT Services requesting an extension to your account; this needs to include how long you require access to University facilities.

For any queries about your university username and your access please contact its-help@reading.ac.uk

During this time staff email services will continue running normally for the majority of users and while a mailbox is being moved there will be no impact to service. At the end of a move, a mailbox will briefly become inaccessible while the work completes and the system reconfigures itself to the new storage, although new emails will be delivered as normal.

The completions will be scheduled out of hours to minimise impact.

Once the mailbox move has completed if the client has been left open you may be asked to restart your email program. Users of outlook may receive the following message:

If you receive this you should restart Outlook.

In the event of any other problems the first course of action should be to restart your email program, but in the event of further difficulties you should contact its-help on ext 6262.

The Web Support Team will be contacting site owners to discuss this process and to arrange the transfer.  The outline plan is to work as follows:

• First the IIS6 site will be migrated to a IIS7 development server for the owner to check if it is working as expected.
• Should this be successful, we will agree a cut-off date for site updates after which changes made will not be copied to the new live server.
• We will transfer the site to the live server, and again site owners will check if it is working as expected.

We understand that some sites may have changed ownership since set up, if you are responsible for a site and it is on this server, or if you are not sure and you want to check, please feel free to contact us by sending an email to its-help@reading.ac.uk with the subject line FAO WST.

Some sites have not been updated for a long time, so this is a good opportunity for owners to inform us if they no longer require their site. We will then arrange for them to be archived.

Where we have difficulty in contacting the owner of a site we will do our best to identify them by following this up with the appropriate Head of Department and/or via the IT Supporters.

At the end of this item is an example of this email, with the link removed. Please note the poor grammar and spelling.

IT Services will never ask you to reveal your password nor would we ever ask you to upgrade your email account in this manner, as this is a centrally managed service.

Should you have any concerns regarding an email you may have received or system security and anti-virus protection, contact your local IT Supporter or ITS Help on ext:6262

******WebmailUser Information Technology Unit******

Dear Client,
This notice is to alert all reading.ac.uk users that there has been a
recent flaw in our mail server. Due to this downtime most email relays
will be delayed. Some accounts will be unable to receive mails.

Our technicians have fixed this problem but in other to migrate to the
new server manual update is required from you as the email owner. This
update is simple as it only requires you to login. Please click or
open the link below and login to have your account successfully
migrated to the newly repaired Mail Server.

http:*******Address removed*********

Thanks for your understanding. Please remember that in a few days the
old server will shutdown. Any email account that has not been updated
will become unfunctional.

Thanks.
Webmail Team.

The primary reason was to begin deployment of the new version 10 of Sophos for Windows, which adds a level of network protection not possible with version 9. This is in order to protect against emerging threats as we have been advised by Sophos.

Sophos 10 for Windows will be deployed gradually over the coming month with no user action required. The most obvious change that you will see is the icon on the task bar will change from

To

Summary of changes:

• Protection is offered at the network driver level rather than only in common web browsers.
• Sophos can now assess if a PC is missing any Microsoft/Adobe/Java/Apple etc. patches.
• Servers running Sophos now operate with a “long term support” version (fewer reboots for upgrades).
• Faster updates with better resource usage (assuming Windows Vista or later).

1) Java vulnerabilities:

All but the latest versions of Java released in February (Java 1.6.0_31 and 1.7.0_03) are vulnerable to “driveby” exploits via web pages that will silently install malware. Such “drivebys” are typically via malicious adverts on otherwise innocent webpages or by injected malicious Javascript in compromised websites (e.g. shakespearesglobe.com a couple of days ago).

As of yesterday, 15 March, the most prevalent exploit kit has been including an exploit of the latest vulnerabilities.

You can test your Java version by visiting http://www.java.com/en/download/installed.jsp, but if you don’t have Java installed already, then you probably shouldn’t install it.

IT Services has a Domain logon script that checks for installed Java and then updates it as required. We’ve been testing this in ITS for the last few weeks and are looking for some volunteer department OUs in the Active Directory. Please let Huw Wright <h.e.p.wright @ reading.ac.uk> know if you’d like to volunteer!

2) Remote Desktop vulnerabilities:

This week’s Microsoft Patch Tuesday releases included fixes for a serious vulnerability in Remote Desktop that could potentially be used in a network worm. There are no exploits in the wild yet, but security experts think this is only a matter of time.

ITS are expecting to release the patch in Windows Server Upate Services this lunchtime after testing.

Users with Remote Desktop enabled on their machines, and Terminal Servers really need to be patched in the next few days.

3) Adobe products:

It’s also important to keep Adobe Acrobat and Flash up-to-date; both have had security fixes in the last couple of weeks, but I’ve not seen exploits targeting the vulnerabilities yet (the bad guys are doing too well with Java).

If in doubt, the free Secunia Online Scanner at http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online/ (which ironically needs Java) will tell you about the most important vulnerabilities on a system.

Christopher Wakelin,

On the “high profile” front, we reached a significant milestone when the core communications equipment for the Kotaraya Tower in Malaysia was delivered here for configuration and testing. Sorting out the contractual, shipping, and logistics details has been a lot of hard work for many people in IT Services, and we have appreciated the help of our colleagues in FMD and Procurement. The next stage in our plan is to finish our configuration work and demonstrate the proposed IT equipment to those who will have to manage its use in situ, before it is finally shipped to Malaysia for installation.

Behind the scenes, two of our staff (Chris de la Force and Chris Wakelin) were invited to a meeting at Sophos (our supplier of virus protection software). The company has been so impressed by Chris W’s regular work in identifying and notifying Sophos of newly-detected threats (they call the information he sends them: “the Wakelin Files”!), that we have been offered Sophos’ “Platinum” level of service cover for the cost of our existing “basic support” service. Quite an achievement, and deserved recognition of the excellent specialist work carried out regularly by Chris and Chris to protect the University from malicious software attacks.

Amongst the projects completed in February was the “RoomView” system installation which allows for the remote control of AV equipment in 7 lecture theatres on the Whiteknights Campus and in rooms at London Road. This will allow ITS to respond more quickly to problems in these rooms and provides better proactive monitoring of AV equipment. Yet another “behind the scenes” example of something which will make a big difference to the quality of our services.

John