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As part of Furman University’s transition to Microsoft Office 365 we will be replacing the University’s Barracuda spam filtering service with Microsoft’s spam filter on November 29. This transition will take place in the afternoon, and after the switch, all of your new spam messages will appear in your “Junk” mail folder.
If you have been maintaining email “whitelists” and “blacklists” on Barracuda, you can import those lists into our new spam filter. Instructions for moving those lists are in the “How do I…” section of our Office 365 help site. The IT Service Center can also help answer your questions about our new Microsoft spam filtering service: (864) 294-3277.
Thanks for your patience as we complete our email transition to Office 365.
South Carolina Department of Revenue Announces Major Data Breach
On Friday October 26, 2012 the South Carolina Department of Revenue announced that it had experienced a major data breach of its computing systems. Approximately 3.6 million social security numbers along with 387,000 credit/debit card numbers were exposed in this incident.
Anyone who has filed a South Carolina state tax return from 1998 to present may be affected. Since much of Furman’s community would have filed a South Carolina state tax return during this time, it is highly likely that faculty, staff, and student may be affected by this data breach.
For more information see the South Carolina Department of Revenue security site.
Furman takes the security and privacy of your information very seriously. Information security and privacy are vitally important. While no system is completely immune to cyber attacks, university auditors routinely check to ensure that Furman follows industry best practices for information technology security. In addition, the university never stores credit card information on Furman servers, and requires service providers provide evidence of compliance with the stringent security terms in university contracts.
Please remember to never share your password with anyone. If you have questions about Furman’s information security, please call the Information Technology Service Center at (864) 294 3277.
Microsoft has announced that Office 2013 will be available in early 2013. Office 2013 spans the full family of Office applications, servers and cloud services. The new Office has a fresh, touch friendly design that works beautifully on Windows 8 and unlocks modern scenarios in social, reading, note-taking, meetings and communications.
Starting October 19, customers purchasing Office 2010 from local retailers or resellers will receive the new Office for free upon availability. Customers will also see a preview version of the new Office on Windows RT devices, beginning with the Windows 8 launch on October 26.
If you would like to give the pre-release version a try, please visit http://www.office.com/preview.
Win cash, gain experience, and earn international recognition with one short video or a poster!
The EDUCAUSE & Internet2 Higher Education Information Security Council (HEISC) is conducting a contest in search of short information security awareness videos and posters developed by college students for college students. The contest seeks creative, topical, and effective videos (two minutes or less) and posters that focus attention on information security problems and how best to handle them.
Winners will receive cash prizes, and their videos and posters will be featured on the HEISC website (www.educause.edu/security). The winning videos and posters may be used in campus security awareness campaigns.
A gold, silver, and bronze prize will be awarded in three categories—training films of two minutes or less, 30-second public service announcements (PSAs), and posters—for a total of nine cash prizes. Honorable mention prizes will also be awarded.
Cash prizes for videos
- Gold: $2,000
- Silver: $1,500
- Bronze: $1,000
Cash prizes for posters
- Gold: $1,500
- Silver: $1,000
- Bronze: $500
Deadline: March 8, 2013.
For more information, visit http://www.educause.edu/SecurityVideoContest.
Good luck!
All faculty and staff now have Office365 accounts!
Dates to Remember:
- September 28, 2012 – Last day for new e-mail to be sent or received by FirstClass. Web access to FirstClass will be turned off, but the FirstClass client will still get to old FirstClass resources.
- October 15, 2012 – Last day for faculty and staff to request that their mail be exported from FirstClass.
- December 12, 2012 – FirstClass turned off.
Please contact the IT Service Center, at extension 3277, with any questions or concerns.
The iPad iDeas for Learning Expo will be held on Wednesday, September 12 from 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm in Johns Hall 101. Furman faculty and staff are invited to engage with Furman faculty who will share their experiences using iPads for teaching and learning.
This interactive session features several Furman iPad initiative participants, and will be a great way for you to add to your collection of apps for organization, scholarly pursuits, teaching, learning and general productivity. Seating is limited, so please RSVP to Jean Childress to reserve your seat today. Don’t miss this opportunity to optimize your iPad experience.
The iPad iDeas for Learning expo is co-sponsored by CTL, ITS and Library members of the Instructional Technology Workgroup.
This year Furman University began using a new cloud-based email and calendar service from Microsoft called Office 365. Microsoft recently wrote a case study of Furman University’s transition to Office 365. Read the case study on Microsoft’s website.
Furman University requires that computers connecting to the FU-Students wireless network run Furman’s anti-virus software, and have the most recent security software updates installed. This week Information Technology Services will be holding “Wireless Connection Clinics” to help new and returning students install software updates and connect to the FU-Students wireless network.
If you have trouble connecting your computer to the FU-Students wireless network, please bring your computer to the Multimedia Commons, located on the lower level of the Duke Library during one of the times listed below:
- Thursday, August 16th, between 10 a.m. and 8 p.m.,
- Friday, August 17th, between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.,
- Saturday, August 18th, between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., or
- Sunday, August 19th, between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Please contact the IT Service Center, at extension 3277, with any questions or concerns.
On July 7, Furman University’s learning management system was upgraded to Moodle 2. This upgrade provides some significant improvements over the older version of Moodle that has been in place since 2008. You can access the new system by going to the MyFurman Portal and clicking the Moodle link in the upper right. To view a list of upcoming Moodle training events for instructors, please click here. These workshops will be beneficial for both new and experienced Moodle users.
All Fall term 2012 courses are now available on the new system. If you wish to access older materials, please go to http://coursesarchive.furman.edu. This archive of older Moodle courses will be available until July 7, 2013. After this time, instructors can request backup files of their old content from the ITS Service Center. Instructors can find instructions on how to easily move old course content into course sections on the new Moodle server here. In some cases, courses with large amounts of content may fail to import. If you experience any errors when moving content, please contact the ITS Service Center and ITS staff will move your course to the new system for you.
Please note that if you maintain any metacourses or special courses that do not correspond to a specific course section in ARMS, these courses, along with all the content contained within, will be moved for you by ITS staff over the next few weeks.
The ITS department welcomes your feedback on this new system so we can continue to improve the online teaching environment for instructors and students.
Office 365 Project Update
Furman’s move to Microsoft Office365 is nearly complete! For the start of Fall classes we will have all students with Furman email accounts, and over 95% of faculty and staff, will be on Office 365. The entire campus community have Office 365 accounts by the end of September. Please remember that Public Announcements and other campus notices are now available on the MyFurman portal
With the end of our move to Office 365 nearing, we do want to let you know about three important dates:
September 28, 2012 – Last day for new e-mail to be sent or received by FirstClass. Web access to FirstClass will be turned off, but the FirstClass client will still get to old FirstClass resources.
October 15, 2012 – Last day for faculty and staff to request that their mail be exported from FirstClass.
December 12, 2012 – FirstClass turned off.
The move to Office365 is a large, complicated project, and it is the major focus for ITS service improvements in 2012. With mail and calendars now mostly moved to Office 365. We have begun testing a new Office 365 tool called “Lync”. Lync provides chat, video, and web meetings for Office 365 users. We will have more information about Lync in the Fall.
Our thanks to you for your patience and support as we work to improve Furman University’s information technology services.
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