News
The new cell phone policy, issued by CNS, went into effect August 19, 2009. Please visit the CNS cell phone site for more information.
Posted: 10-Dec-2009 5:36 PM
The recent e-mail delivery issues have been resolved. E-mail is now flowing regularly through the system, and all mail queued for local delivery have been delivered. During the outage, some mail may have been returned to the original sender as undeliverable. In those cases, the sender would need to resend the message for it to be delivered to the UK recipient.
Micrsoft has released Internet Explorer (IE) version 8. At this time, UK's SAP environment is not certified to run with IE 8. Therefore, it is NOT recommended that you install IE 8 if you are using IRIS/SAP. Notification will be sent when the IRIS/SAP environment has been certified with IE 8.
The first Student Technology Forum that was held in The Hub @ WT's on February 17, 2009. Students attending the event completed 244 surveys. From these surveys this site was created to communicate free services, discounts, and other opportunities available for students. UK IT is planning a second Technology Forum for Spring 2010. Check back for updated information.
Need help leveraging technology? UKIT is pleased to offer you access to Cutter Consortium. Cutter Consortium provides a comprehensive range of consulting, training and content by the leading expert practitioners in business and IT. Click here to sign up (use your UK e-mail address and subscription code: ryaRm)
UKIT is pleased to announce the release of a new feature for current students, faculty, and staff: The ability to register your wireless device. By registering your wireless device once every six months you can bypass the wireless login page when connecting to our wireless network. For more information please see our wiki article: How to Register Your Wireless Device, or go straight to the Wireless Device Registration site to get started.
UKIT coined the term "link blue" to define a directory account (userid and password) which can be used when connecting to many campus-wide systems. For more information click here.
Security Tips
Social Networking Sites are a favorite of Internet users. Network World has an informative article containing twelve tips on how to protect yourself. Read the article by clicking here.
USB thumb drives and email enabled PDAs have become an extremely useful tool for keeping up with important data and transferring it between computers. However they can become a liability if they are lost, stolen, or damaged if you don't take steps to protect yourself.
Users wishing to maintain Institutional Data on thumb drives or PDAs should read the UK Information Systems Use Policy, in order to insure compliance with University Policy regarding the use and transportation of this data. Of particular importance are sections 4, which defines Institutional Data, and section 8 which stipulates the protection requirements for such data.
To increase your chances of recovering a lost device you should carefully check the owner’s manual to setup any Owner information in the device. If the device doesn’t contain any such mechanism you may wish to create a simple text file in the main folder called “Return to Owner Information”. The file name could be longer if desired, but many operating systems shorten long files name unless the user has selected that file, so you should start the file name with a word that quickly identifies the content. In this file you should include your current contact information and how the user could return the device to you.
If the device supports it you may wish to enable its encryption or locking features to protect sensitive data on the device, but be forewarned: if you forget your encryption key you will be unable to recover the data. For devices that don’t directly support encryption you may be able to purchase software from a vendor that can provide these services. Encrypting or locking the device will also require that you decrypt or unlock it before you will be able to access the contents, so this may require that you run special software on the machine you are attempting to access the data from.
In order to protect yourself from losing important data you should make regular backups of any critical data on the device by copying that data to a computer’s hard drive or CD-Rom backup.
IT Security is closely monitoring the widely reported threat from the Conficker worm along with its April 1st activation date. Many are calling Conficker one of the most significant and widespread outbreaks on the internet in recent years. The Conficker worm uses a vulnerability in the Windows operating system to infect its host. A windows update released by Microsoft in October of 2008 patches against this vulnerability and makes the PC immune to Conficker infection.
While scans of UK's network have indicated that Conficker's impact at the University has been minimal, it is always best to ensure that your PC has the most recent updates along with an updated antivirus package to protect against this and similar threats.
Best practices to prevent exposure to the Conficker worm:
- Be sure to run Microsoft Windows Update and install all the latest updates.
- Make sure you are using an antivirus program. All students, faculty, and staff can download McAfee Virus Scan from http://download.uky.edu/ for free.
- If you are already running an antivirus program, make sure it is using the latest DAT files.
If you are having trouble installing Windows Updates please contact the IT Customer Service Center at 859-257-1300.
For more information on the Conficker worm please visit these sites:
Services
Are you backed up? Click here to read about services available for desktops and servers.
Mac Updates
Office 2008 for Mac is now available to all UK students and employees. For information visit download.uky.edu. Students who have downloaded Office 2007 for Windows are not eligible for Office 2008 for the Mac, as only one license is available per student.
Starting with the Fall 2008 Semester UKIT has simplified access to the Mac computers in our labs by enabling students to login using their link blue computing account. This change requires new students to activate their Mac access before they will be able to use the labs, and may require some returning students to contact IT Support to have their accounts reinstated and their files restored. For more information, including how to activate your access, please consult our wiki article.
