Tag Archives: Central Systems & Network Services

Are you reading this post via a feed reader? If so, read on…

On Tuesday May 31st we’re going to change the categories on this blog, so if by any chance you’re using a feed of a specific category, that’s going to break. We suggest subscribing to the whole blog for maximum enjoyment! If you’re not a LIS staff member & would like to filter out the more staff related posts, you can subscribe to the new “Middlebury Community Interest” category after May 31st. The other categories will be “LIS Staff Interest”, and “Post for MiddPoints” which will cause the post to be added to the MiddPoints blog too. All the old categories except “The Essentials” will be converted to tags for easy searching.
The LIS Web team developed this new scheme, following recommendations that came out of the open meeting about the future of the LIS Blog (including a call for simplified categories). The AD Team reviewed and approved these changes. We welcome your comments.

PCI and Blocked Email Messages

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS v2.0) is a standard that has been accepted by all major credit card companies and most credit providers. It is a standard that we must abide by if we are to accept credit cards as a form of payment. PCI DSS is broken into 12 requirements; each focusing on a different domain of security.

While PCI DSS is not an actual law, it is a standard enforced by the credit card industry, and the banks have stated and upheld the policy that they will no longer accept business from non-PCI compliant merchants. The government has used the PCI DSS as a yardstick by which they have measured such regulations as Gram-Leach-Bliley, Sarbanes-Oxley, and most recently the drafting of the Data Accountability and Trust Act.

We employ a device called a Barracuda here at Middlebury which helps us prevent SPAM from flooding our email system. Just shy of a year ago this system was updated to enable it to filter on cardholder information. By default this feature was turned on. We have left this enabled and have begun reporting on these blocked messages and alerting the senders of outbound messages.  The Barracuda is intended to serve both as a SPAM filter and a compliance tool.

Wireless in the dorms

There are approximately 60 buildings classified as dorms here at Middlebury providing beds to over 2400 students in 5 Commons.  From a ‘wireless’ perspective these dorms can be divided into three broad groups in terms of how many Wireless Access Points or WAPs they have:

  1. those that have moderate coverage
  2. those that have minimal coverage, typically in lounges only
  3. smaller houses that require only one or two WAPs

Continue reading

Two new staff in Central Systems & Network Services

Please welcome two new staff members in CSNS:

  • Ian Burke started November 29th as our new Network Security Administrator; he is also on the LIS Security Team.  Ian comes most recently from Amherst, NH and was a Security Engineer for TJX in Framingham MA.
  • Jim Stuart started December 8th as System Programmer/Administrator.  Jim was Chief Technology Officer for Qvault, Inc. here in Vermont.   He previously worked here at Middlebury from 1993-1999 in various positions in ITS, prior to the merger which created LIS.

Marcy moving to Enterprise Applications

Danna Gianforte and I (Area Directors for Enterprise Applications and Central Systems & Network Services, respectively) recently agreed to a staffing change.  Marcy Smith is now a member of the Enterprise Applications area.  We believe that having the soon-to-be-hired Database Administrator (DBA) and the Enterprise Systems Administrator (aka Marcy) reporting to the same Area Director will:

  • streamline communications
  • remove roadblocks in the workflow
  • improve service to the functional areas

Central Systems & Network Services will continue to work closely with Marcy, as we do with all of Enterprise Applications staff.  Marcy will be moving to the Davis Family Library at some point, but the details of that move have not been finalized.

I enjoyed having Marcy in my area and certainly learned a lot about Banner and just how complicated it all is from her!  All of us in CS & NS look forward to continuing to work with Marcy.  In fact, the looming upgrade to Oracle 11G will give us plenty of opportunity.  But that’s a subject for another post…

Did the network just get faster?

Generally LIS only hears about it when our systems aren’t responding quickly enough or aren’t working at all.  We almost never get a call saying, “Gee, the servers have been up for a very long time without crashing!” or “My gosh, our network is extremely reliable and response time has been really fast lately!”  Nevertheless, we continue to work very hard to keep everything running and at top speed.  We regularly make improvements behind the scenes to benefit the whole community.  One recent such improvement was a doubling of the size of our primary Internet connection. Continue reading

Sunday Downtime Notice for May 23, 2010

UPDATE: Due to various concerns, Banner will NOT be offline this Sunday.

LIS will occasionally perform maintenance on systems during a scheduled window of Sunday 8AM-10AM EST. The following systems may not be available during that time this Sunday, May 23, 2010. If you have questions or concerns, please contact the Helpdesk at helpdesk@middlebury.edu or (802) 443-2200.

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