Committee meeting - May 6, 2021

Carol Lu   
Secretary to the Committee   
May 6, 2021
   
Present: Don Duff-McCracken, Greg Parks, Jason Testart, Paul Miskovsky, Steven Bourque, Trevor Bain, Pratik Patel, Andrea Chappell, Adam Savage, Erick Engelke

Regrets: Daryl Dore, Greg Smith, Andrew McAlorum, Bill Baer, Lawrence Folland, Robyn Landers
 
Agenda   

1. Chair’s remarks (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]
2. Approval of the minutes from Thursday April 8, 2021 [5 min.]
3. Englab - removing need for VPN while keeping 2FA (Erick Engelke) [5 min.]
4. Zoom discussion (Erick Engelke) [10 min.]
5. SSH Authentication Standard (Jason Testart) [10 min.]
6. Other business and roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
7. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday May 20 at 1:30 p.m.]

Chair's remarks

• The ISO 8601 date format proposal document was sent to UCIST for review

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting 

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

Englab - removing need for VPN while keeping 2FA (Erick Engelke)

• Engineering has been getting complaints from users about having to connect to VPN in order to access Englab
• VPN has been removed on half of Englab computers so that users can connect to Englab directly and use 2FA instead of connecting to the VPN
• To prevent password spraying, these computers will lock after 7 incorrect password attempts and lock for ~7 minutes before allowing the user to enter their password again 

Zoom discussion (Erick Engelke)

• Questions regarding Zoom
  • Will we have a University of Waterloo sign in page for Zoom ready for the start of classes in May? 
  • Will Zoom be integrated with LEARN? If so, when? 
  • Who is licensed to initiate Zoom meetings? 

Comments and discussion

• Andrea Chappell and her team had another meeting with Zoom today
• A campus license is already available but some issues are still being worked out
  • Investigating how to integrate existing licenses 
  • Identifying procedures for expiring licenses
• Zoom enables the feature to allow users with a UW email to automatically receive an option to 'Join this account' to the campus license when they log in 
  • UW users who have a Zoom account with an external email (e.g. gmail) would not receive this option 
• When Arts acquired an enterprise Zoom license, users had to change their account email to userid@uwaterloo.ca in order to receive an email from the account owner to join the license
  • Users with existing licenses received a rebate email from Zoom once they joined the enterprise license
• Two possible configuration models
  • A new user account can be created on-demand; the user would see the UW ADFS single sign on page when they enter their UW email address to log in
  • Invitations can be emailed to users by uploading a CSV file of users
    • Renison used this option since they had a limited number of licenses available
• Local authentication is not being enabled yet
• LEARN integration will be implemented at a later date

SSH Authentication Standard (Jason Testart)

• A memo has been drafted to outline the SSH authentication standard and how the process is being communicated to server owners
• CTSC members were in support; Jason to share the memo with UCIST for review

Other Business/Roundtable 

Technology Integrated Services, Steve

• A reminder that the inbound mail record is being updated
  • Email will be routed through the Cisco Cloud servers instead of Mailservices
  • No mail loss is expected

Environment, Don

• Any suggestions for lab sanitization protocols? 
• Engineering faculty has 10 labs with an additional 10 labs in other Engineering departments
  • Recommending self-cleaning procedures for all lab users
  • Safety Office is currently reviewing these procedures with Engineering
• TIS is adding additional access control in buildings to help with people flow
• Faculty of Health is looking to limit student presence on campus
  • Main campus presence will be in Kinesiology labs
  • High touch services (e.g. mice and keyboards) will be removed from rooms
• The Library has bookable study spaces that will be sanitized the same way as bookable computers
  • Staff have been hired to clean between uses for the Spring term; this may not be feasible to do for the Fall

Science, Paul

• Science is permanently closing their largest lab
  • There is a push towards using VDI and WVD for labs
  • Environment expects to have a hybrid lab environment in the future

WUSA, Pratik

• WUSA is working on sending out more WUSA boxes to ~8000 first year students