SHSU Information Resources Update

Se-cu-ri-ty [*measures taken to guard against espionage or sabotage]

The process to decrease the number of days from 365 to 180 days for your SHSU password is underway. This means you may be getting a password change reminder soon. How to alert you is a dilemma since there are so many phishing expeditions. Therefore, this more official looking document is one way of saying "it's real!"

You can reset your password when logged in on a campus PC. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL, then Change Password.

You can reset your password from SamWeb. Select Computer Services, then Account Password Change.

You can reset your password in Outlook Web Access. Click Options, then Change Password.

You can avoid getting that e-mail by simply setting an Outlook reminder to reset it yourself. Changing it ahead of time will ensure you are never caught in a crunch with having to change it.

In Outlook, click on a time in your calendar.
Type the subject as "reset password."
Set the recurrence to be Monthly, the first Friday (or any day) of every 4 (or 5) months.

Many of you use Nell very infrequently. So you may want to make an Outlook reminder to prompt you to change it too. Your Nell password should be changed every 90 days. It can be changed by typing Set Password at the VMS $ prompt.

Li-cens-ing [*to permit or authorize]

Want to keep your S: drive lean and responsive? Make sure you are not storing downloaded music on your S: drive. SHSU prohibits the distribution of unauthorized MP3s. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is RIAA is actively targeting popular file sharing applications looking for infringements. In September, SHSU received an increased number of complaints from RIAA against SHSU clients. If you have questions, please visit with the Director of the Newton Gresham Library, Ann Holder. She serves as the campus Copyright Compliance Officer and can help you sort through what you can and cannot have and do with copyrighted material.

Col-lab-o-rat-ing [*to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor]

We are forming test user groups of faculty and staff to test new networked software prior to release. We are looking for both PC and Mac users and specifically would like volunteers at this time for the following applications. E-mail the helpdesk if you are interested in ensuring these products work effectively on workstations on the campus network.

SPSS 17

Maple 13

AMOS 17

Snow Leopard

We also encourage you to complete the Helpdesk Call Log and SamWeb Work Order surveys. If you are satisfied, please tell us. If you are not, please tell us why. As an extra incentive during the Fall 2009 semester for you to take the time to fill out the short survey, we will draw two names a month from the Helpdesk Call Log and Work Order responses. The winners will be provided a free 4GB flash drive for departmental use.

**Stor-ing [*to place or leave in a location (as a warehouse, library, or computer memory) for preservation or later use or disposal]**

Your office PC should not have any documents saved directly on your desktop. If you have university Microsoft Word documents, music files, movies, or photos on your desktop, move them to your S: drive or departmental T: drive. If they are personal files, store them on a personal flash drive or your home computer.

Pro-tect-ing [*to cover or shield from exposure, injury, damage, or destruction]

Do you log in to Nell or upload files to the web server? To ensure your password and information is not plucked from mid-air by a hacker, two utilities have been changed. QVT has been replaced by Secure CRT and WsFTP has been replaced by Filezilla.

Re-dun-dan-cy [*serving as a duplicate for preventing failure of an entire system (as a spacecraft) upon failure of a single component]

You’ve seen references for the last few months to a new “GigaMAN." The expected time frame for the additional GigaMAN installation, which will provide SHSU's Internet connectivity, is now the week of October 8th to October 15th.

What's Good, What's Not, & What's Happening When

All SHSU technological purchases must be processed through the Computer Services SamWeb Work Order system.

The Helpdesk provides support for SHSU equipment and software on the local area network. Each month's update will include the versions of software and minimum requirements for hardware with the new or changed information highlighted and bolded.

Memory Sticks: Purchase (and encourage your students to buy) flash drives that are USB Mass Storage Compliant.

Floppy disks (3 1/2" or 5 1/4") should not be used as a storage device for University information.

Wireless peripherals such as mice and keyboards have proven problematic in the campus environment and should not be purchased and/or installed.

Operating Systems: The supported version of Macintosh machines is OS X, version 5. The supported version of Microsoft's operating system is Windows XP.

Software Packages: The supported versions of office suites are Microsoft's Office 2007 for PC's and for Macintoshes Microsoft Office 2008. Available packages are listed.

Hardware Configurations: This may be a good time to look at your office workstations and your budget and determine what should be upgraded.

The minimum requirements for the SHSU local area network support for a PC are a 2.5 GHz processor, 1.5 GB RAM, and an 80 GB disk, with 15 GB free. Our recommended configuration is a 3.0 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB memory, and a 250 GB hard drive.

The minimum configuration for a Macintosh on the LAN is a 1.6GHz PowerPC single processor, 1GB RAM, and a 40GB hard drive.

The Information Resources division may schedule significant periods of downtime for major system upgrades and maintenance. For your planning purposes, the weekend following each graduation will be set aside for scheduled outages. Additionally, certain systems may be unavailable on Friday nights after 6 p.m. and on holidays. To permit patches and routine updates, managed Macintosh nodes may be automatically rebooted between Friday at 6 p.m. and Saturday morning at 8 a.m.

On Friday, October 2nd, after 6pm, SHSU and HP Professional will be performing hardware upgrades to Nell. This will require downtime for Nell, SamMenu, SamWeb, and all Banner applications.

All offers, training, and software above pertain to faculty and staff at SHSU only. If you have any questions, compliments, comments, or concerns, please let us know.

*Definitions provided by the online version of Merriam-Webster.

Approved by the Associate Vice President for Information Resources for e-mail distribution to SHSU faculty and staff