Information Management Newsletter for Block 4, 2006
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In this Issue:
Fall Password Audit
Information Management has just completed the Fall 2006 password audit. Of the 5000+ active accounts audited, only 247 were cracked by the password auditing software. Congratulations to those of you who use strong passwords and defeated the password auditing software!
This is in accordance with section 4.1 of the CC Password Policy (see section 4.3 for recommendations on making strong passwords): http://helpdesk.coloradocollege.edu/index.php/policies-and-procedures/cc-password-policy/
Please keep in mind user passwords are one of the most important aspects of IT security. The overall IT security infrastructure is only as strong as users' passwords, and even a single password compromise can have a catastrophic impact upon that infrastructure. If you have any questions, please feel free to call the Help Desk at x6449. Thanks to everyone for your help with improving IT security at CC!
Please help Information Management welcome Donny Baker. Donny is our new Systems Programmer/Analyst in Administrative Computing. He will be focusing on creating helpful Banner reports using the Cognos reporting tool, and he will also serve as our backup Oracle database administrator. Donny will be working closely with Dan Arnold, Merriam Spurgeon, Sue Huntington, Eric Ross, and Dennis Osborne, as well as with our team of administrative computing users in offices such as the Business Division, the Advancement Division, etc.
Donny is a Colorado native from Beetdigger country in northeast Colorado. He attended Colorado State University and has spent his professional career in Colorado Springs in the IT field. He is looking forward to working with the CC family and taking on all of his roles here.
Outside of work, Donny mostly enjoys spending time with his 3 children, Risten 8, Seth 7, and Noelle 3, and his wife of almost 10 years, Connie, who is a Colorado Springs native. He coaches youth soccer at the Briargate YMCA and has briefly coached a few other sports. He recently started taking Tae Kwon Do to keep up with his sons and his wife. They all enjoy hiking, bike riding, being outdoors, and staying very active. Whenever any other spare time arrives, he enjoys landscaping and maintaining their yard. He has also dabbled in beer brewing, is an avid Bronco fan, and of course likes CC hockey. He also hopes to start running again soon.
He is looking forward to working with and meeting you all.
After several years of careful study, vendor review, and campus conversations, we are poised to upgrade the campus network infrastructure in 2007. We will use our blockly newsletter to keep you up to date on key changes and scheduling issues, but we wanted to briefly share some relevant background information at this time.
The CC network infrastructure is made up of two broad components: the physical devices that route digital traffic around and off campus, and the servers & data storage that provide certain specialized applications and places to keep the information. While CC has generally been in a position to fund healthy life cycles for the latter (servers and storage), as well as for computers (e.g., office machines, lab machines, etc.), we have not been in a position to afford a healthy replacement plan for the physical devices that route digital traffic (e.g., switches, routers, and the associated cable pathways).
Further, our physical network infrastructure was designed in two separate stages, and so we do not have a unified network architecture – the devices serving our main academic and administrative buildings are already 7 years old, and the devices serving our residential areas (as well as small campus buildings) are more than 12 years old. [In “electronics” years, these devices are ancient – well past their useful life cycle, with many no longer even supported by the vendor]. The two portions of our network must then be “bridged” together, resulting in a bandwidth bottleneck particularly troubling for the residential buildings.
A sound, new network design will substantially improve speed, reliability, and ubiquity for all campus users. We will be improving both the wired and wireless connections all over campus, and we will be enhancing many other facets of the network infrastructure as well (such as security, and the proactive ability to monitor and prevent problems before they escalate).
By January 15, 2007, after a thorough and competitive bid process that has already reduced costs markedly, we will have selected our final vendor. From roughly March 2007 (particularly during Spring Break) through August 2007, we plan to work with the selected vendor to implement the new network. As stated before, we will communicate with the campus when we have more details, but the clearly articulated goal is to minimize campus disruptions during this installation process. Thank you in advance for your understanding, and we think you'll be very excited by the new features and increased stability of our modern network design!