Area 51 notes, Jan. 12, 2012

Present:  Mary Backus, Terry Simpkins, Chris Norris, Ian Burke and Doreen Bernier
Absent: Carol, Mike, Shel

Ian Burke joined our attenuated meeting to discuss the change management proposal for the Sophos antivirus project. On Jan. 25-26, Sophos will be onsite with a test component.  Ian noted that Bradford will not be in place prior to this visit.  We reviewed the timeline, and discussed whether or not it made sense to roll out Sophos to just Windows users, since the Casper distribution system for Macs is not yet in place and only the relatively few Macs already in Active Directory will be upgraded before Casper is ready.  Windows machines are the first priority, and when Casper is implemented, we will push Sophos out to other Mac machines automatically.  Roll-out will be incremental, using small groups (i.e. not the entire population at once).  Only the malware and antivirus options in Sopohos will be enabled to start.  Other options are available, which may or may not be implemented later.  Tamper protection will also be enabled so to discourage individual users from uninstalling the software from their machines.  The removal process for the current Symantec software will be automatically handled via the Sophos implementation process.

Ian has prepared a draft all-campus email communicating this change and submitted it to Mike for distribution.  It should be sent out by Friday, January 13th.  Ian also plans to place posters across campus to alert the college community.

We discussed how to promote the Mar. 12-14, 2012 NERCOMP annual conference (“The Human Side of IT”) and decided to make a blog post to advertise this to interested folks.

Finally, next week’s agenda is shaping up this way:

  • Discussion of liaison expectations for non-RCS liaisons
  • timeline for performance evaluations (due to HR by end of March)
  • assigning leaders for each area of the google/mslive eval
  • meet with Fred Schmitt
    • senior leadership team assessment
    • upcoming team re-education

Thanks for reading
Doreen & Terry

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