Archive for the 'Voice and Data Services' Category
October 28th, 2009 by Isaac Straley
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Phishing
On October 9, 2009, more than 6000 UCI affiliates received an email message claiming that they were required to click on a link which would take them to a web site to update their email accounts. This message has been confirmed to be an example of “phishing,” a malicious attempt to have you divulge personal information in order to allow someone to gain access to your information or services.
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) would like to remind you that you will never be asked for, and you should never provide, your password or other personal information by email. If you ever question a request for information, please contact the OIT Help Desk at (949) 824-2222 or oit@uci.edu so we can help you check its validity. If you suspect that you have received a phishing email, do not respond to it or click on the links. You may optionally report it to the Anti-Phishing Workgroup, but in any case delete it.
Spear phishing emails are a special type of phishing email targeted to a select group of users. These emails tend to be more specific than a regular phishing email, including information more detailed and familiar to the recipient. As with standard phishing emails, these messages often include a request for personal information and a notification of account suspension or closure for failing to reply. At UCI, such a message will often simulate official notification from a real campus department such as OIT, and may make reference to your actual account or email address.
More information on phishing and how to protect yourself can be found online. If you have not already done so, OIT strongly recommends you take the online “Information Security” tutorial available on TED.
October 28th, 2009 by Brian Chrisman
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Cell Phone
Cell phones are a significant component of work life at UCI, whether for reaching people away from the office, connecting to the Web and email with a smartphone, or receiving critical notifications (zotAlert) in the event of a campus emergency.
OIT works with many cellular providers to continuously improve coverage at UCI, as well as to make discounted services available to employees. A summary of providers with a presence at UCI (AT&T, Nextel, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless) as well as cell site locations can be found online. Recently, for example, a new AT&T site was installed on Engineering Tower, significantly improving coverage for AT&T subscribers.
OIT is also researching new technologies in the field of cellular telephony. One promising new technology is the “Distributed Antenna System” (DAS) whereby numerous small, easily-installed antennas communicate through fiber optic cable to a coordination site which connects to the cellular carriers. This makes cellular coverage more like Wireless Internet (WiFi) in its flexibility and capacity.
We are always happy to hear from cell users on campus about their experiences so that we can prioritize proposals from cellular carriers for improving coverage at UCI.
July 22nd, 2009 by Francisco Lopez
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ZotPortal
After an extensive campus-wide planning process, the student portal “ZotPortal” went live on April 27 of this year. IAT-NACS worked with Student Affairs to design the high-reliability and high-performance system hardware, and provides ongoing network and system administration services, as well as housing elements of ZotPortal in separate data centers.
Through ZotPortal students can access academic and administrative information, connect to a Facebook account, subscribe to UCI campus news, student media and entertainment feeds, check UCI libraries catalogue and even search for people and campus web sites from one search box.
Students can arrange ZotPortal’s look and layout flexibly through a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface, subscribing to the particular information channels they want.
ZotPortal runs on hardware intended to provide maximal service continuity. There are duplicate servers, connected through IAT’s DMRnet. In the event one server becomes unavailable (say due to a power failure), the twin automatically assumes all portal activity. Within each physical server are many CPUs, configured to provide a flexible group of virtual servers so that ZotPortal can support very large numbers of simultaneous requests. Data is stored on a disk cluster configured with Sun’s ZFS (zettabyte file system) which provides both redundancy (data protection) and high performance parallel access.
July 22nd, 2009 by Dana Watanabe
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IDM
IAT-NACS provides a suite of identity management, authentication, and authorization services collectively referred to as Identity and Access Management services. A group of web pages has been developed describing UCI network identities (e.g., UCInetIDs), how they work, and how they will evolve. There is a wealth of information for those interested in technical details. Here are some highlights.
The campus directory provides contact information for campus affiliates, and allows you to control certain information pertaining to your network presence on campus, such as the server your UCI email should be sent to.
UCInetIDs are network identities issued to campus affiliates. With your UCInetID and password, you can access a variety of online services, many through WebAuth. IAT has recently extended UCInetID authentication, with appropriate limits, to applicants for admission, and third parties for whom some services will be provided.
UC Trust is a system for using each campus’s network authentication system (UCInetIDs at UCI) to access services, as appropriate, provided by other UC campuses as well as some companies whose services are restricted to UC affiliates.
Because UCInetIDs are so vital to conducting University business, IAT has developed plans for enhancing UCInetID security. Also, as the number of users, past and present, grows, it will be necessary to upgrade UCInetIDs beyond their current 8-character limit. You can read about this project online as well.
May 22nd, 2009 by Brian Buckler
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Cisco IP Phone
Conference calls make a cost-effective alternative to traveling to meetings. UCI’s phone system supports conference calls for 3 to 8 people, including up to 6 off-campus participants. For larger groups, commercial options such as QWEST are available.
For faculty and staff with a Cisco IP phone, even more flexibility is available with “meet me” conference calling. This kind of conference call can support up to 16 users, any number of which can be off campus. Once one or more parties have joined the call, the originator can leave the conference without disruption. However, since this requires a special-purpose extension to be reserved for the conference, please call Telephone Customer Service (x4-5123) at least a day in advance.
Phone conferences can be enhanced with tools that allow on-line sharing of documents and desktops. A systemwide agreement has recently been concluded with ReadyTalk, and other products are on the way.
May 22nd, 2009 by Brian Roode
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PSearch
Faculty and staff now have a powerful new tool for finding contacts through UCI’s online phone directory. PSearch melds the directory data NACS maintains with state-of-the-art database research from the lab of ICS Professor Chen Li.
PSearch allows users to enter whatever information they may happen to have (first name, last name, department, phone number, etc.) and PSearch will offer any entries in the campus phone directory which match. PSearch is error tolerant (you can find people with only an approximation of the spelling of a name) and real time (results are displayed and refined as you enter information.)
PSearch represents a collaboration between NACS and ICS. Professor Li’s team offered the intelligent database search technology, and NACS offered the data and our user-interface experience. Key contributors on Professor Li’s team include PhD student Rares Vernica at UCI and Guoliang Li, a visiting researcher from Tsinghua University, China.
PSearch is only one potential use of Dr. Li’s “type-ahead search” technology featured on his TASTIER project web page. Future uses may involve other campus-wide or even UC-wide data sets. This new technology makes it possible to simultaneously support full-text (google), quick-link, and directory searches in a single query as exhibited by the search box on the ICS home page.