Spring 2008

"Lunch'n Learn" Workshop

Please join us on March 26th from 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm for the second "Lunch'n'Learn" Workshop. This series of workshops targets educators working at the College of New Jersey, educators who are interested in using technology in their courses but may not know how to get started. Our goals are to provide simple and practical ideas for bringing technology into courses to enhance student learning and teacher effectiveness. The second Lunch'n'Learn workshop will focus on the recent improvements in SOCS and the innovative tools you can use to communicate with students. The workshop will be moderated by Dr. Lynn Braender from the School of Business and Craig Kapp from Instructional Technology.

Hoagies and refreshments will be served. Please RSVP using the form linked below as seating is limited. We will be meeting in Business Building room 105, and hope to see you there!

IT Patch Management (or "What is this PatchLink Thing?")

With the increase of worms and viruses on the Internet, anti-virus and operating system updates are now a part of daily life. In order to reduce the amount of time individuals need to spend managing the security of their systems, and to improve the overall security posture at the College, Information Technology employs a layered defense to security, including a network firewall, network based anti-virus and centrally updated anti-virus on each workstation.

Information Technology has taken additional steps to improve the security of college owned computers. Through a centrally managed system, Information Technology will "harden" operating systems by applying critical patches released by Microsoft. Applying these patches will limit the vulnerabilities that a worm or virus can take advantage of, reducing the chances of a user becoming infected.

Whenever possible, patches will be distributed on the 4th Wednesday of the month at 5 am. This time and day was chosen in consultation with ITPC and the Cabinet in order to minimize the impact of this process on academic activities (Microsoft publishes it's patches on the second Tuesday).  IT will test these patches that Microsoft publishes on a small group of users. If there are no issues with the patches, we will distribute them campus wide on the 4th Wednesday. This makes it easier for campus community members to anticipate the patch process and minimizes the chances of a patch disrupting a class.

As part of this update process, you may be asked to reboot your machine for the patch to take effect. A dialogue box will open up with related instructions. Rebooting your computer, or the classroom computer, is an important step in applying these patches.

Backing up your Data

Saving your data is a relatively simple step that we've all mastered at this point. But WHERE you save your data is important! Below is a list of options on locations where you can save data. Please remember that you will save yourself time and frustration by always making a backup in the event that something happens to your original documents or to your computer

Your Hard Drive (C:)
Most users like too save their data to the My Documents folder on their C drive. This is a quick and easy way to access your documents. However, if your hard drive becomes damaged and needs to be replaced, there is a chance the data will be unrecoverable. If you do save files to My Documents, or elsewhere on your hard drive, it is highly recommended that you back up this data on a regular basis, either to a removable drive or to your network drive(s) (see below).

Your Network Drives (H: and S:)
The best place to save files is on your network drive(s). This ensure that the files are safe and protected. One of the major benefits to saving files to the network is that if a file is accidentally deleted or becomes damaged, it can be recovered, often by you! However, due to space limitations on the network servers, we ask that you use the network drives solely for work-related data, not personal. If it's personal, put it on a removal media device, so you can easily tranport it to whever you need to go (see below).

Removable Media
It is often convenient to save documents to a flash drive or to burn them to a CD for easy transport. However, it is strongly recommended that you only use removable media as a backup, and not as your primary storage location: sometimes removable media becomes damaged, and the information may not be recoverable.

Identifying Email Scams

Phishing is an email message crafted to get you to hand over personal, confidential information to a criminal.  These requests will look legitimate, often including the College logo, and ask you to visit a website or reply to an email message and verify your email account name and password.  If you do so, you are providing your account credentials to a criminal.

"It's only my work email, who cares?"

Ever bought anything online, say from Amazon.com or Buy.com, and have the receipt in your inbox?  That receipt contains your full name and address.  Have you saved your credit card information in that online account?  Do you use the same account name and/or password anywhere else, say with your bank or mortgage company?

A criminal could use this information to purchase thousands of dollars worth of stuff, open bank accounts, credit cards, loans, and even acquire official documents in your name.  Commonly,  these scammers will use your email account to send literally millions of spam messages from you.  These messages could be sent to everyone in your address book, namely all of your co-workers and friends.  More importantly, all of those spam messages are identified with the College which results in the College being put on a blacklist.  Other Internet sites will assume email from the College is spam and refuse to accept it!

"What can I do to identify email scams?"

These scams rely on your action to infect, activate, or execute malicious programs.  They use social engineering techniques or sympathy to prompt unsuspecting users to do so. 

            -Do not open email of unknown origin.
            -Never divulge personal information, account names, or passwords via email.
            -Do not reply to spam.  If you do reply and ask to be removed from a spam mailing list, all you've done is verified that you have a working email address.  The result will be even more spam from these unscrupulous people.
            -Do not forward chain letters.  These letters are usually a call to action to aid in some purpose and are often untrue.  They can contain scams and help spammers to gather even more email addresses.
            -Do not click on links in email messages unless you can verify the entire link.  Hover over the link with your mouse pointer and examine the full link details in the status bar (usually the lower left portion of your email application).  If “tcnj.edu” does not appear at all or is not in the proper location within the link, this is a scam message and you should not click the link.  For example:

            legitimate:  http://www.tcnj.edu
            legitimate:  http://www.tcnj.edu/~it/security/
            NOT legitimate:  http://www.tcnj.edu.scammers.com
            NOT legitimate:  http://www.tcnj.edu.scammers.com/~it/index.htm

            Better yet, visit websites by typing the link in to your web browser.

If you think you replied to a phishing email or visited a scam website, don't panic.  Change your password immediately and notify the helpdesk either by phone (x2660) or by email (helpdesk@tcnj.edu). 

Criminals are using the Internet.  Take a few simple steps to stop them and don't become a statistic.

Password Protection

Information Technology would like to take this time to remind everyone about passwords and security. In order to provide assistance in your selection of passwords, the following guidelines are offered:

- Passwords should not be based on well-known or easily accessible personal information
- Passwords should contain at least 8 characters
- Passwords should be mixed case, and contain a combination of letters, numbers, and special characters
- Passwords should not be words that can be found in a standard dictionary or are commonly used slang

Also remember: NEVER share your password! Sharing passwords in order to allow other staff to assist you with work is not safe. If you are currently sharing your password, please change it immediately, and don't distribute it to anyone else. Your Unix account gives access to Email, SOCS, and the YESS system, so anyone who has access to your username and password has access to personal information (salary, home address/phone, and so forth).

It is recommended that passwords be changed on a regular basis, at least every six months to a year.