Mandatory Passsword Change
The Heartbleed Vulnerability that occurred last week could expose usernames, passwords and security certificate keys, and is easily exploitable. Exploits cannot be logged or tracked, so you won’t know if you’ve been compromised. As a precautionary measure, everyone is being asked to change their GC password by noon this Wednesday (4/16/2014). Go to GCOnline at https://gconline.goshen.edu and click on the Change GC Password link to change your GC password. If you do not change your GC password by noon this Wednesday ITS will change it for you and you will need to contact the Help Desk for your new password. If you have a handheld device, once you change your GC password, you will also need to change the saved password on your devices. Examples of apps on devices that would have saved passwords are Email, Google Drive, ArubaVIA, and FileExplorer Free, to name a few. If you have questions or need assistance contact the Help Desk at 574-535-7700 or helpdesk@goshen.edu

Heartbleed Vulnerability and your personal data
In light of the recent Heartbleed Vulnerability, you may be asking what you should do concerning your personal passwords and protecting your personal data. Industry recommendations are to change your passwords everywhere that you log in. For some FAQs about the Heartbleed Vulnerability and recommendations for protecting your personal data, as well as a top 100 list of U.S. sites and their status, go to http://www.cnet.com/news/heartbleed-bug-what-you-need-to-know-faq/ 

As some of you may have heard on the news or read on news sites, a new a critical vulnerability has been discovered that affects more than two thirds of servers on the Internet world wide. This vulnerability is called the "heartbleed vulnerability". ITS will be taking steps to apply the required patch to each of our affected servers over the course of the next week.  Because of the critical nature of this vulnerability, and that we have over 70 servers to deal with, there may be times that out server admins will need to work on a server on an as needed basis.  We will do our best to schedule patching of servers during off-peak hours to minimize impact and downtime of our services, but we may not be able to avoid impacting some services and users during peak hours.  As the patches are applied, servers will go down for a period of about 15 minutes. If you are attempting to access a service and are not able to connect, please wait 15 minutes and try again. The process of applying the critical patch will also require us to reissue new SSL certificates on all of our servers.  Certain devices, computers and web browsers store SSL certificate information, which means that you may be prompted to accept a new certificate for services that you are connecting to or web sites that you are visiting.  Simply follow the prompts to accept the new certificate.  If you don't get prompted to accept a new certificate and the page doesn't load correctly, you may have to clear your browser's cookies and cache.
If you have any questions about this communication, or need assistance, contact the Help Desk at (574) 535-7700 or helpdesk@goshen.edu

With the lates iOS update for iPads came a change in how PDF attachments are handled in the Mail application.  If you receive a PDF attachment that is a 1 page PDF, you will no longer have an attachment icon in the body of the email to select.  Instead you will see an image of the PDF's contents present in the body of the email message.  If you want to perform a Quick View of that PDF, or view it in another app such as GoodReader, you will need to tap and hold on that image to get the app picker to appear, and then choose the app that you wish to view it with.   Multi-page PDFs still come through as an attachment icon in the email message that you can tap to view, or tap and hold to get the app picker. This issue doesn't seem to affect iPhones.

If you have any questions about this, contact the Help Desk at 574-535-7700 or send an email to helpdesk@goshen.edu

At the beginning of fall semester, 2013, the ITS Department rolled out Google Apps for Education to all GC students and employees.  Google Apps for Education (aka GAE) gives everyone access to a new set of technology services.

You can log into your GAE account at  http://google.goshen.edu by using your Goshen College username and password. Once logged in, you can access the following services:

• 30 GB of cloud storage via Google Drive--access your data from any device, anywhere.
• Document collaboration via Google Apps (Word Processing, Spreadsheet, Presentation)--share and edit documents with anyone, anywhere
• Blogging space via Blogger--publish to the world
• YouTube video storage and channel--share your video globally
• Google Hangouts--ad hoc video conferencing with up to 10 people
• 10 GB of Personal Webspace via Google Sites
• Google+ --Google's social media site

We will continue to use Zimbra for email and calendar services so that we can take advantage of local integration possibilities (i.e. automatically populating calendars with class schedules, and reserving campus rooms).

Note: Google Calendar is enabled because Google+ and Hangouts require it, but is NOT supported and should not be used for Goshen College business. We will also continue to provide local storage (GC File) for sensitive data. While you can save all types of files in Google Drive, since the data is on Google's servers rather than GC's, you should never save sensitive information such as SSNs, health, financial or academic records in Google Drive.

Our decision to make these services available to the campus grew out of multiple observations from diverse areas, including:

• Existing faculty/student use of Google Apps in the classroom
• General observations that Google Apps facilitate collaboration and mobile computing
• Executive-level interest in Google Apps
• Interest in collaborative technologies from other colleges as we discussed collaborative programs

Along with the iPad, there's a lot here to absorb and it won't happen overnight. That said, making effective use of these technologies in higher education is important work because mobile, social, cloud and consumer technologies are reshaping how the world uses computers and technology. We're doing our best to put you in the driver's seat, not get in the way, yet providing helpful direction and assistance when asked (to use a transportation metaphor!)

If you have further questions about Google Apps at GC, check out our Support and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) pages at

http://www.goshen.edu/its/home/googleapps/

Thank you,

Michael Sherer
Director of Information Technology
Goshen College