Committee meeting - October 21, 2021

Carol Lu   
Secretary to the Committee   
October 21, 2021
   
Present: Adam Savage, Andrew McAlorum, Bill Baer, Don Duff-McCracken, Jason Testart, Lawrence Folland, Paul Miskovsky, Pratik Patel, Robyn Landers, Steven Bourque, Trevor Bain, Greg Parks

Regrets: Daryl Dore, Greg Smith, Erick Engelke, Andrea Chappell
 
Agenda   

  1. Chair’s remarks (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes from Thursday September 23, 2021 [5 min.]
  3. WatIAM Employee Pre-creation sponsorship time limit (Lawrence Folland) [10 min.]
  4. Security update to the Board of Governors (Jason Testart) [15 min.]
  5. Other business and roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday November 4 at 1:30 p.m.]

Chair's remarks

  • No remarks.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting 

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

WatIAM Employee Pre-creation sponsorship time limit (Lawrence Folland)

  • Employee pre-creation sponsorships in WatIAM have a maximum time limit of 120 days
    • CS is notified of new incoming faculty members a year in advance; these faculty members need early access to WatIAM and Quest
    • Due to the short time limit on the employee pre-creation sponsorship, the sponsorship for these faculty members has to be manually renewed every 3-4 months before the start of their hiring contract
  • Is there a better process for providing these users with access? 

Comments and discussion

  • There currently is no HR process to assist with this
  • Another option would be to set up an Affiliated person sponsorship instead of Employee Pre-creation
    • Affiliated person sponsorship can be set for a maximum of 3 years 
  • Employee Pre-creation sponsorship time limits have been set to 120 days to prevent unwanted prolonged access in the case that an employees employment status changes (e.g. termination)
  • For Affiliated Person sponsorships, user access to Connect, M365 and VPN needs to be added in Grouper
  • Is a sponsorship type specific to faculty or post docs needed? 
    • Post docs may be working before they are actually hired in Workday
  • Some limitations are due to HR legal concerns
    • New employees are not entered into the HR system until they formally accept the offer and complete the necessary paperwork
  • Currently when a user's Workday record expires, they lose access to all systems
  • Provisioning Library access is currently difficult
    • There are sometimes users with no UW affiliation requesting access to UW Library resources
    • Some journal resources are only authorized for use by a specific group (e.g. UW Pharmacy students)
    • May be easier to ensure Library access is being provisioned to UW affiliated users if there was a paper trail (e.g. a user is registered as a volunteer)
  • CTSC members will review the WatIAM Admin wiki and provide comments or suggestions for updates

Security update to the Board of Governors (Jason Testart)

  • Jason will be presenting a security update to the Board of Governors
  • Potential topics include highlighting current security threats, gaps in security research support, research data management, how passwords are the biggest threat
  • Let Jason know if you have any ideas for potential topics to include as part of the presentation
  • The presentation will be shared with CTSC at a later time

Other Business/Roundtable

Technology Integrated Services - IST, Steve

  • Wi-Fi performance has improved and is running stable this week after various issues at the start of the term
    • Most issues were related to authentication and bugs in the backend
  • A lot of improvements and changes have been made to the Wi-Fi service to create more stable performance
  • The vendor assigned two senior technicians for five weeks to review the University's Wi-Fi configuration from the ground up
    • Current configuration was set up with the vendors guidelines and assistance, this is just extra assurance/review
  • New hardware has noticeable speed and performance improvements
  • Once Wi-Fi is stable for a longer period of time, TIS will investigate adding additional features (e.g. dynamic networks, Chromecast, rogue Wi-Fi identification tool)
  • New APs can do ARP cache provisioning
    • This cannot be enabled until all Aruba APS are offline

Math, Robyn

  • The rogue Wi-Fi identification tool from TIS has been working well to find rogues
  • Any updates on the proposal document for DNS contact formatting conventions?
    • Can revisit again in a future meeting

Environment, Don

  • Environment has created guidelines for hosting remote defences
  • Starting to have discussions with Mike Cocker and Lisa Tomalty about migrating N:drive to OneDrive in faculty labs
    • There is currently an issue with OneDrive on Windows Virtual Desktop; file syncing has to occur before users log off otherwise their files are not available

CS, Lawrence

  • Last discussion about DNS contact formatting conventions was regarding mailing list vs. distribution list
  • CS will be moving servers out of the Science server rooms

Client Services - IST, Andrew

  • Mass email management RFP is live and closes on November 5
  • Most campus groups have communications staff involved in the project's advisory group
  • Would ideally like to select a system by theh end of the year
    • Tool could go live as early as next Spring with pilots conducted during Winter term 
  • Mailman is not the focus of this RFP; mailman lists will be reviewed in the future
    • The tool chosen will be able to handle emails to users and to groups

WUSA, Pratik

  • WUSA is using sendy.co for mass email management
    • Integrates with AWS and tracks clicks