The Curative Analysis team in IT is tasked with finding the causes of significant IT issues that affect campus. In this news update, we draw your attention to some of the problems being investigated or issues handled recently.
Upper Campus Network Connectivity: Power loss to the Graham building recently cause the failure of network connectivity to upper campus on two separate occasions. Power was immediately restored, and the network was brought back into operation. A plan is underway to relocate the network equipment from the Graham building this summer as part of the Utility Relocation project.
Phishing Attempts: Spring semester 2018 has seen a 250% increase of phishing campaigns coming to WCU. Several steps are being taken to provide a more secure environment for our users. The first step was to turn on Multi-factor authentication (MFA) off-campus for all employee accounts by February 28. MFA for student accounts will be turned on in Fall 2018. Along with requiring MFA for off-campus, we turned on Modern Authentication on April 9, 2018. Modern Authentication, when combined with MFA, provides an additional level of security. Other research into advanced email security options is currently underway to provide further protection against phishing attempts.
Banner Performance: Heavy loads to our Banner Production environment have been causing performance issues during peak processing times. IT Systems personnel have been working with the UNC System Office to have additional resources such as CPU and RAM allocated to the WCU production environment. In addition to added resources, IT personnel have projects slated to alleviate the overutilization of processing by offloading some of the heavier applications from Banner Production such as AppWorx and the Banner Operational Reporting Environment.
Digital Signage: A recent issue caused media feeds on digital signage to display incorrectly. Text and photos became out of sync after random intervals of time, and the content had to be republished to correct the error. The digital signage player application has been upgraded to version 2.0.7.0. IT staff also successfully implemented workflow recommendations from the vendor, and the issue has now been resolved.
May 2018
Global Problems: (Total 8)
Mitel Phone System: 1
Network Connectivity: 3
OnBase: 1
PAW Print: 1
VCAT: 1
VPN: 1
The Division of IT is committed to adopting a proactive, process-oriented approach to prevent problems before they arise. We will continue to keep you informed on our progress.