UPDATE (15:45 18/12)

Email, AppsAnywhere and SMTP are now working.

• Personal pages are down (https://www.personal.reading.ac.uk/)

Apart from the above, all services affected over the weekend are now back up.

UPDATE (14:00 18/12)

• AppsAnywhere site is up, but apps cannot authenticate which makes them inaccessible.
• Personal pages are down (https://www.personal.reading.ac.uk/ )
• SMTP is down, meaning scanning to email is not working, and email cannot be sent from Linux systems such as the MET cluster.

UPDATE (11:15am)

Most  services have been restored.The only remaining services still affected are:

• IIQ

We are currently discussing lessons learnt and how to minimise the impact of power outages in the future.

UPDATE (10:15am)

Our teams have been working on finding fixes and have restored a majority of services.

The updated list of affected services is:

• TOPDesk
• Apps Anywhere
• IIQ

We are continuing to work on a fix for our IT Self Service Portal (TOPDesk) and will provide an update soon. We will most likely have TOPDesk and Apps Anywhere back up soon but IIQ may take a day to restore service.

We will also provide further details on the cause and, depending on the cause, provide plans for avoiding such disruption in the future.

We have had a significant amount of disruption over the weekend. This was as a result of some work dealing with a scheduled power outage in the Earley Gate data centre, but it interrupted our services in an unexpected way.

We apologise for any disruption this has caused and appreciate that this has been incredibly inconvenient.

We are continuing to see some service disruption this Monday morning and will look to remedy this as soon as we can. We will have a further update by 11am, please check back here or our twitter.

Below is a list of services that are still affected:

• TOPdesk
• Adelante
• Agresso
• Remedy
• Comino
• Apps Anywhere

We are still receiving a high amount of reports from students and staff about a new spam email arriving in University Inboxes.

This spam email is quite sophisticated in that it is uses the title of a genuine email that you have replied to previously in order to trick you into believing it is authentic.

If you open the email you will see a mostly blank email with an information notification at the top of the email saying, “If there are problems with how this message is displayed, click here to view in a web browser” or something similar. If you click this link it will take you to a BBC website but in the process collects your private user credentials. It then uses these credentials to send out more harmful emails from your account. On mobile devices the email sometimes appears with a green button saying ‘Display Message’.

Do not open this email as it could damage your work and computer and may make your private details vulnerable.

If you are concerned about this email or other similar emails then please call ex.6262 or go to reading.ac.uk/it

If you are a member of staff whose students are reporting this to you we strongly recommend that they change their password via the https://password.reading.ac.uk website.

If you go to https://password.reading.ac.uk/reset/ you can reset your password; provided that you know your University Username, Student Number and PIN. These can be obtained by filling out the form at https://password.reading.ac.uk/reminder.

For tips on keeping yourself and your information safe online, visit the IT web page on Cyber Security.

An official email from a University of Reading project team was sent yesterday afternoon a little earlier than scheduled. As the email was prematurely released the branding and formatting was incomplete. Thank you for responding and letting us know your concerns about the email, it is good to see Staff aware of seemingly suspicious emails.

We have sought clarification from the Windows 10 Upgrade Team, this morning, who have confirmed that this is not a phishing email but a genuine request for further information.

The information requested in this email is required by the Windows 10 Upgrade Team and they have asked that you please follow the link to the Microsoft Forms page and provide this.  You will receive a further request for information from the team in due course, this will also be sent from Windows10 <vis18w@reading.ac.uk>.

As always, if you have any concerns about any emails you receive or that you believe are suspicious, please do contact the Service Desk via it@reading.ac.uk or 6262.

Additionally, for tips on keeping yourself and your information safe online, visit the IT web pages on Cyber Security.