Many colleges and universities, including Denison, have been dealing with compromised email accounts over the last few weeks. Once compromised, the accounts are being used to send phishing email, which typically leads to an infected computer if the recipient clicks the link in the email. While no school has yet pinpointed a cause for this increase in compromised accounts, the activity highlights a potential weakness for some of us here at Denison – an insufficiently complex password. Someone attempting to crack a password is likely to start with common password combinations first, which is why it is good practice to use a password that contains a certain degree of complexity.

To help combat the ever increasing sophistication of attacks by cybercriminals, we made some updates earlier this year in how password changes for your BigRedID (e.g. doej @denison.edu) are handled, including an increase in the password complexity required during a password change. While many of you have updated your password since that date, we are writing to encourage those of you who haven’t to visit our password change page to update your password. You can change your password by going to the My Apps tab and selecting “Change my BigRedID password” or, search for “password change” within MyDenison. After changing your password, you’ll also have the option to set up a contact via text message or an alternate email address in case you forget your new password later and need to perform a reset.

Things to know about changing your BigRedID password:

• If you change your password from a Denison-owned PC or Mac, we recommend that you restart your computer after the change so that the workstation has an opportunity to synchronize your account. On a Mac you may receive a prompt to update to your Keychain, which will require you to enter your previous password to complete the change.
• If you are off-campus when you change your password on a Denison-owned computer, you will need to use your old password until you return to campus. Your new password will be synchronized with your computer the first time you connect on campus.
• If you have configured your mobile device to receive Denison email, it should prompt you to enter your credentials the next time it attempts an email synchronization
• For eduroam, most devices will prompt you to enter your new credentials. On some devices you may need to “forget” the eduroam wifi profile and then reconnect to it

Tips for creating a strong password:

• It should be 8 to 16 characters long
• It should contain a combination of at least 3 of the following: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numerals and symbols
• It cannot include common words or names, spaces, angle brackets or control codes
• It cannot contain your BigRedID or D-number

Common password mistakes to avoid:

Cybercriminals use sophisticated tools to quickly crack passwords, but you can make it much harder for your password to be compromised! DO NOT USE THE FOLLOWING:

• Personal identity information that could be easily guessed or discovered online (ex. pet names, nicknames, birth date, address, driver’s license number)
• Dictionary words in any language
• Words spelled backwards, abbreviations, and common misspellings
• Common letter-to-symbol conversions, such as changing “o” to “0” or, “i” to “1” or “!”
• Sequences or repeated characters (ex. 12345678, abcdefgh, 22222222, or adjacent letters on you keyboard such as qwertyui or asdfghjk

If your password doesn’t meet the complexity requirements listed above, please update your password today!

If you have any questions or require assistance, please contact us at the ITS Help Desk at 740.587.6395 or helpdesk@denison.edu.

Update 9/10/15 6:45am:

The network updates are complete. Please report any network issues to the ITS Help Desk at 740-587-6395 or helpdesk@denison.edu. The Help Desk will reply as soon as possible during regular business hours (see www.denison.edu/its/helpdesk for hours).

Original Post

ITS will be performing network maintenance on Thurs. 9/10/15 from 5-7am which may result in the loss of the wired or wireless network in the following locations.

Shepardson, Rose House, Softball, and Curtis West

Please do not edit files over the network or submit information online during this time period as your work may be lost when the network outages occur.

This post will be updated when the work is complete. If you experience any network connectivity issues after this time, please contact the ITS Help Desk at 740-587-6395 or helpdesk@denison.edu.

Additional Denison email accounts were compromised overnight and used to send SPAM to other Denison email addresses and to outside email accounts. The SPAM/Phishing email that is most widely circulating right now is titled “Fwd: Important” and simply contains “Important Message” and a link in the body of the email. Please do not click the link!

To learn more about how to identify SPAM/Phishing messages and other important web safety practices, please visit “StaySafeOnline.org” and click on the “I Want to StaySafeOnline” item in the menu.

If you clicked on a suspicious link, please change your BigRedID password immediately by going to MyDenison and choosing “My Apps” and then “Change my BigRedID password”.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the ITS Help Desk at 740-587-6395 or helpdesk@denison.edu.

In early August, ITS introduced a new secure wireless network to the campus. ITS strongly recommends that all students, faculty, and staff connect to the new “eduroam” network. Connecting to eduroam not only provides secure, encrypted wireless network access while on Denison’s campus, it also allows you to seamlessly gain secure wireless network access when visiting participating educational and research institutions around the world (see list of eduroam participating institutions). For faculty and staff, eduroam allows you to connect to administrative systems (like Cognos reports or Banner) over wireless on campus without requiring use of the VPN client.

Connecting to eduroam is easy…

1. Select “eduroam” from the list of available wireless networks on your device.
2. Enter your Denison email address (yourBigRedID@denison.edu) and BigRedID password.
3. Accept a security certificate for radius.denison.edu or radius2.denison.edu. (The language for this varies by device. For Windows 7 it asks if you want to “Terminate” or “Connect” – choose “Connect”!)
4. Optional but recommended for Macs: If you have previously connected to the “denison” network, ITS recommends that you make sure that “eduroam” is selected as your top preferred network so it connects to “eduroam” whenever it is available. This will prevent your computer switching back to the  public, unsecured “denison” network unexpectedly. (See instructions from WikiHow on changing your default wireless network.)

For more information, please visit MyDenison and search for “eduroam” using the search box in the top right corner. If you have any questions about or problems connecting to eduroam, please contact the ITS Help Desk at via phone at 740-587-6395, by email at helpdesk@denison.edu, or in-person in Fellows Hall Room 100A.

Update 11/12/15:

Printing to Lab printers is now supported for Windows 10 computers thanks to a recent Novell iPrint update.

Update 9/16/15:

A new version of McAfee has been released which supports Windows 10. You can download the updated version by logging in to MyDenison and selecting My Apps, then Software Downloads…, and then McAfee.

Original Post:

Windows 10 on personally-owned computers: There are several Denison-provided services that are not yet supported on Windows 10 given its very recent release (July 29, 2015) including…

• McAfee AntiVirus & AntiSpyware software: the current version for Windows computers posted in MyDenison does not run on Windows 10. Per the vendor, a new version that supports Windows 10 is expected by September 2015.
• Printing to Lab or Department Printers: the current version of Novell iPrint (used for printing to networked printers) does not support Windows 10. Per the vendor, support for Windows 10 is expected by November 2015.

Caution! With the release of this new operating system please be aware of associated malware/ransomware attempts from sources purporting to be Microsoft.

Windows 10 on Denison computers: Information Technology Services (ITS) will be evaluating this new operating system for use within our campus environment this academic year. This evaluation includes testing enterprise applications for compatibility and ensuring that Windows 10 will work with our standard hardware and network configurations. Once the evaluation is complete, we will initiate a pilot project, develop a support plan, and determine our campus-wide deployment strategy. We will keep you updated as new information develops. In the interim, please note that our current standard operating system for PC-based workstations is Windows 7. Systems running Windows 7 will receive the broadest level of technical support from ITS.

We will be making routing changes to the Dorm subnets Wednesday, August 19th between 5-7am.