Committee meeting - July 26, 2018

Darren Bondy
Secretary to the Committee­­­
July 31, 2018

Present: 

Andrew McAlorum (Acting Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Colin Bell, Marko Dumancic, Robyn Landers, Keith McGowan, Omar Nafees, Jason Testart

Guests:

Ray White (for Erick Engelke)

Regrets:

Trevor Bain, Steven Bourque (Chair), Andrea Chappell, Daryl Dore, Erick Engelke, Dave Kibble, Paul Miskovsky, Adam Savage, Greg Smith

Agenda

  1. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of June 14, 2018 [5 min.]
  3. Mandatory 2FA update (Jason Testart) [10 min.]
  4. Other Business [10 min.]
  5. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. Next CTSC Meeting

[Will be held Thursday, August 9, 2018 at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021.]

Chair’s Remarks (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Thank you to everyone who provided a representative for the guest wi-fi working group.
  • Steven Bourque will be back by the next CTSC meeting; thank you for your efforts while I have been chairing in his absence.
  • Darren Bondy will be leaving the IST department to join Athletics; his last meeting will be August 9.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

The previous meetings minutes were accepted as distributed.

Madatory Two-factor Authentication

Jason Testart distributed an outline for mandatory two-factor authentication on campus.

Comments and questions

  • Do you think you’ll make the deadline?
    • Making the deadline isn’t a technical issue. It can be enabled now for anyone that wants to enable it, but making it mandatory requires other logistical steps.
  • What will happen for students/staff that do not have modern cell phones/devices?
    • We currently have a workaround in place for students on devices that do not support 2FA; if they are using a device that doesn’t support it, they will not get a prompt to use 2FA.
  • 2FA will not be mandatory for the VPN until later (not before the August MC shutdown).
  • Once you add 2FA, can you remove it?
    • Yes, there is a device management portal that you can manage which devices/applications use 2FA.
    • It will eventually be mandatory.
  • For those interested in implementing 2FA on your systems, there is a development instance that you can try; contact Andrew Ward, in IST.
  • Will adding 2FA to the Outlook Web Application (OWA) help with the email reputation issues we have been having?
    • Not likely at this point because of some of the issues with older mail clients but the goal is to eventually get to that point.
  • Adding 2FA to OWA will help with email reputation issues we have been having? Because of some of the issues how it works with older clients, not likely today. But that is the goal to eventually get there.

Other Business

Staff departure

  • Colin Bell will be leaving the University to accept a job at Bruce Power; this will be his last CTSC meeting.

WatIAM/connect account creation

  • When you create a WatIAM account you used to be able to send off a request for connect account at the same time. Now you must wait for the WatIAM entry to be claimed before you can request it.
    • This is just an interim process; the goal is to have the new WatIAM (SailPoint) create a connect account automatically.
    • It is high on the priority list, following two-factor authentication mandatory implementation.

Roundtable Reporting

Math (Robyn Landers)

  • In addition to the weeklong power outage in MC, the north half of campus will be shut down on August 29 and 30. Plant Operations is working on getting generators to cover the server rooms during that two day outage.

Environment (Marko Dumancic)

  • In the process of preparing for the EV1 power outage. It will be starting the week of August 6.

Computer Science (Omar Nafees)

  • Have been working on making our inventory database open source with instructions for others if they would like to use it; more information to come on that. Will look into potentially having someone from CS demo the service at a CTSC meeting.

Arts (Keith McGowan)

  • Arts also has an in-house asset management system that we can demonstrate at a future meeting.  

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on August 9, 2018 at 1:30pm, in EC2 1021.