Committee meeting - February 21, 2019

Carol Lu
Secretary to the Committee
February 21, 2019

Present: Steven Bourque (Chair), Bill Baer, Marko Dumancic, Paul Miskovsky, Andrew McAlorum, David Gawley, Jason Testart, Erick Engelke, Robyn Landers, Carol Lu (Secretary)

Guests: Sean Mason, Steve Weber

Regrets: Trevor Bain, Andrea Chappell, Daryl Dore, Adam Savage, Greg Smith, Dave Kibble

Agenda

  1. Grouper – presentation (Sean Mason) [20 min.]
  2. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  3. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of Thursday January 24, 2019 [5 min.]
  4. Supplier fraud phishing scams (Jason Testart) [5 min.]
  5. Other Business [10 min.]
  6. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  7. Next CTSC Meeting
    [Will be held Thursday March 7, 2019 at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021.]

Grouper presentation (Sean Mason)

Sean Mason attended the meeting to provide an overview of Grouper. View the full presentation on Grouper and access management (PDF)

Comments & Discussion

  • What changes have been made to Grouper? 
    • There is a new front-end server for improved capacity and continuity, syncs are improved
  • What project phase is this currently in? 
    • This is currently in the early/beginning phases of project planning
    • Grouper is being set up for requestors on a case-by-case basis
    • Those interested in setting up Grouper can submit an RT to get started
  • There is a comment/description field for every group and folder in Grouper to identify different entities 
    • Sub-directory permissions can be set to be inherited from parent directories (not inherited by default)
  • Production and pilot sites have the same data sets
    • Production site is currently live

Chair’s Remarks (Steven Bourque)

  • A page has been created on the CTSC wiki to outline campus-wide IT service improvements
    • CTSC members are encouraged to brainstorm ideas and contribute to the content 

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

  • The previous meeting’s minutes were accepted as distributed.

Supplier fraud phishing scams (Jason Testart)

  • An email from '@uniwaterloo.ca' was sent to a vendor requesting a quote for a laptop
    • Domain was registered a day before the email was sent
    • Campus police and regional police have been notified
    • Procurement is notifying suppliers via their website
    • Procurement is looking to get in touch with Legal Services to deal with fake domains that impersonate the University
  • Other institutions have been affected by the same scam

Roundtable

Client Services, IST (Andrew)

  • Organizational changes are taking effect March 7
    • Major changes include the Web Development team moving to Department and Campus Applications (DCA) and the Portfolio Management group moving to Client Services (CS)
  • Recently announced the new Network and Services alert tool
    • It is an integration of the existing tool, made to be more user-friendly 
  • RFP completed for Google search appliance replacement
    • Used to crawl all websites on uwaterloo.ca
    • Decided on an open-source solution with elastic search
    • Will be implemented at the end of March 2019
  • Software licensing: Adobe Acrobat Pro will have a new subscription price model starting 2020 
    • Free version of Adobe Acrobat Pro will work for most general use cases
    • Price model will be consistent with Adobe Creative Suite
    • Acrobat Pro currently costs $110 in the IST Webstore, price will be going up to $240 in 2020
    • An enterprise license would cost $65,000
    • On average, 250 copies of Acrobat Pro are sold annually through the Webstore
      • 250 copies will be available through the Webstore until 2020    

Technology Integrated Services, IST (Steven)

  • Wi-Fi upgrade is currently in progress and is expected to be complete soon 
  • RFP for new Internet connection has closed
    • Will be upgrading the connection to 10GB and switching providers
    • Will upgrade to having 2x 10GB Internet and 10GG to Orion
  • Access control issues have been mostly rectified 
    • E7 is currently a work in progress

Math (Robyn)

  • Power outage scheduled in MC tomorrow
    • Building is reaching a historical high in power consumption 
    • A meter is being installed to monitor consumption levels
  • There is a Wi-Fi access point currently located where the MC expansion construction is taking place
    • IST may wish to relocate this access point
  • MathSOC has made a request to move from mailservices to Google, asking for the University's DNS to be updated
    • Will meet with MathSOC to find out what their intentions are for this