Author Archives: Cynthia Slater

ITS Tech Services Overview Offered December 11 – for New (or not-so-new) Hires

Information Technology Services (ITS) offers a monthly workshop with recent hires in mind called “ITS & You:  Technology Services Overview.”  The next session will be held Wednesday, December 11 at 9:00 a.m.  We’ll introduce services and resources provided by ITS to all Middlebury employees, including:  online learning, file storage, self-service software installation, access to  computing help, and more.  The workshop format will be a presentation with questions entertained along the way, followed by an optional half hour for hands-on assistance with specific questions.

To sign up, please use our online form.  Although geared toward new or recent hires, everyone is welcome to attend – you might surprise yourself with an “aha” moment or two.

Next month’s session will be held on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, at 1:30 pm.  Our complete workshop schedule can be viewed at http://go/techworkshops/.

ITS Tech Services Overview Offered March 11 – for New (or not-so-new) Hires

Information Technology Services (ITS) offers a monthly workshop with recent hires in mind called “ITS & You:  Technology Services Overview.”  The next session will be held Monday, March 11 at 1:30 p.m.  We’ll introduce services and resources provided by ITS to all Middlebury campus employees, including: email, file storage, account security, online learning, and how to obtain computing help.  The workshop format will be a presentation with questions entertained along the way, followed by an optional half hour for hands-on assistance with specific questions.

To sign up, please use our online form.  Although geared toward new or recent hires, everyone is welcome to attend – you might surprise yourself with an “aha” moment or two.

Next month’s session will be held on Wednesday, April 24 at 1:30 pm.  Our complete workshop schedule can be viewed at http://go/techworkshops/.

Issue RESOLVED – 503 errors when attempting to open links to websites sent via email

We are pleased to report that the Safe Links service issue is now resolved and we have re-enabled Safe Links. To recap, Safe Links provides extra protections for the Middlebury community from phishing attacks and other malicious email activity by providing time-of-click verification of web addresses (URLs) sent via email.

Thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve matters. Again, we apologize for the disruption.  Please contact the Help Desk if you have any outstanding issues or questions.

Kindly,

ITS Help Desk

Issue UPDATE – errors when attempting to open links to websites sent via email

Microsoft is making significant progress towards resolving the issue with the Safe Links service. In most all cases now, clicking on a link sent to you via email works on the first try. If it doesn’t work, you can typically try again, and the linked website will open.

We are sorry for this disruption in service and any inconvenience. Thank you once again for your patience. We will provide an update as soon as we have more information.

ISSUE – 503 errors when attempting to open links to websites sent via email

We are experiencing an issue with the Microsoft Safe Links service which means you may receive a “503” error if you attempt to click on a link someone outside the organization sent to you via email.

We are working closely with Microsoft to resolve this issue as swiftly as possible. Microsoft has confirmed that this is an issue with their service impacting customers globally. We do not currently have an estimated resolution time.

We have temporarily disabled Safe Links for new, incoming email messages. We will re-enable the Safe Links service after Microsoft has solved the problem.

We will provide an update as soon as we know more. We apologize for this disruption. Thank you for your patience.

Kindly,

ITS Help Desk

Issue RESOLVED – Multi-Factor Authentication

We are pleased to report that the Multi-Factor Authentication service is restored. Microsoft reported service restoration around 2:00 PM on Monday.

Microsoft provided additional guidance stating they would continue to monitor the situation closely. We’ve been doing the same and can confirm that the MFA is working. MFA challenges are working as expected, across all verification methods.

Thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve matters. Again, we apologize for the disruption. Please contact the Helpdesk if you have any outstanding issues or questions.

Kindly,
ITS Helpdesk

UPDATE – Multi-Factor Authentication

The Multi-Factor Authentication service is now by-and-large restored, though Microsoft reports that the fixes may take some time to propagate across their global infrastructure. Our own tests, and feedback we have received from the community, indicate that authentications are now working successfully.

Here’s a complete list of services that were impacted (when accessed from off campus): Continue reading →

ISSUE – Multi-Factor Authentication

We are experiencing an issue with the Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) service which is preventing individuals who are off-campus and whose accounts are protected by MFA from accessing services like Office 365, Email, OneDrive, Google G Suite, and Adobe Creative Cloud. We are working with Microsoft to resolve matters as swiftly as possible, but we do not currently have an estimated repair time. We will provide an update as soon as we know more.

Here’s a complete list of impacted services (when accessed from off campus):

Continue reading →