It’s been a beautiful start to the new academic year, and I’m pleased to report that the ITS start has been generally smooth, as well. Our team has certainly seen a number of issues with computers, classrooms, and other technology, but most have been minor and quickly resolved.

Sometimes it’s what we don’t experience that tells us that our technology is working well. On August 23, as the return to campus was well underway, CenturyLink experienced a major regionwide Internet service interruption. Before this summer, any CenturyLink outage would have disrupted campus Internet access as well, but last spring we made changes that resulted in a different outcome. Drake still uses CenturyLink but we also have a redundant connection from a second service provider, UPN. When our team became aware of the CenturyLink outage, they disconnected campus from CenturyLink and our Internet access continued as normal through UPN. I can’t promise we won’t experience another Internet outage, but our connection is now more robust than it was last academic year and we know that because of what you didn’t experience.

As always, information security is at the top of my priorities list. Perhaps you saw a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article about a major security incident at Stevens Institute of Technology or reports about a similar incident at Regis University in Denver.

Neither institution is providing much information about the incidents or what they have learned, but two things are clear – these were sophisticated, targeted attacks designed to severely disrupt the business of these universities (who don’t look too dissimilar from us), and these types of attacks are becoming more frequent.

You will be learning about new security initiatives over the coming months. I ask you to help us protect Drake and you by taking information security seriously and remaining vigilant about your online activity. If you would like more information about how to protect your computer and data, please feel free to contact either Peter Lundstedt (director of information security) or me directly.

Beginning last month, Drake is now part of eduroam, a global federation of educational wireless networks. After you connect to eduroam at Drake, your device will then be able to connect to the wireless networks of over 1000 institutions in over 100 countries. Students and employees at other eduroam member institutions will also be automatically connected to eduroam on Drake’s campus.

I encourage you to move to using eduroam soon to avoid any last-minute issues. ITS will be retiring DUStudent on September 13 and DUFacStaff on December 31. After that, eduroam will be Drake’s single primary wireless network. Learn more about eduroam at https://www.drake.edu/its/eduroam/.

Finally, if you’re not already using our self-service support resources, please take a look at the wealth of tips and tools we make available through the IT service portal at https://service.drake.edu/its. You can either browse or use the search tool in the upper right corner to find something specific more quickly.

I hope you have a productive and engaging semester and please feel free to let us know how we can improve our service in support of Drake’s mission.

—Chris Gill, Chief Information Technology Officer