Committee meeting - October 13, 2016

Darren Bondy
Secretary to the Committee
October 19, 2016

Present: 

Bruce Campbell (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Trevor Bain, Colin Bell, Steven Bourque, Andrea Chappell, Don Duff-McCracken, Erick Engelke, Lawrence Folland, Bob Hicks Dawn Keenan, Robyn Landers, Paul Miskovsky, Carl Nagel, Jason Testart

Regrets:

Dave Kibble, Sati Singh

Agenda

  1. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 29, 2016 [5 min.]
  3. Web server configuration fixes (Erick Engelke, Jason Testart) [20 min.]
  4. Other Business [10 min.]
  5. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. Next CTSC Meeting

[Will be held Thursday, October 27, 2016, at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 111.]

Chair’s Remarks

  • None.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

The minutes from the previous meeting were accepted as distributed.

Web server configuration fixes (Erick Engelke, Jason Testart)

Jason Testart provided an update on SSL/TLS security. Topics included:

  • Types of attacks
  • Other issues
  • Why does it matter?
  • Bitsight demonstration
  • What is IST doing?
  • How are we doing?
  • Resolving the issues

Comments & discussion

  • Jason requested that CTSC members review the hosts that have an upper bound score of F or C before January.
    • The list of hosts for each area will be distributed to the committee.

Other business

Graduate student email

  • There have been a small number of cases in Math where graduate students stopped getting email to their mailservices accounts. They were given Connect accounts but were not informed.
    • IST made this switch and have now contacted all students who have been switched over to Connect accounts. This should no longer be an issue.

MapleTA project agreement

  • Faculty IT areas are working in collaboration with MapleSoft TA; Engineering is joining in on this and will be using MapleTA soon.
    • There will be an announcement at the MapleTA conference next week.

Copyright Act Notice and Notice regime

  • Communication was sent to campus regarding the Copyright Act Notice and Notice regime.

Computing at UW SEW course

  • Bob Hicks taught a new SEW course this past week on Computing at UW. The course discusses the different aspects of computing at the University like how to handle spam/phishing attempts. The course will be offered again in the new year.

Roundtable Report

Enterprise Architecture (Colin Bell)

  • Just received licensing on JIRA and Confluence; if you are looking for Wiki services, let me know.

Andrea Chappell

  • D2L has a new look and feel coming out; should be out first quarter of next year.
  • Moving in the direction of hosting in Amazon Web services (AWS) which is a new direction.
  • At the Learning Environment retreat we discussed the next generation of the learning environment and micro credentials/badging; can discuss this topic at a future meeting.

Engineering (Erick Engelke)

  • Had some power outages in the DWE building; resolved now.  

Computer Science (Lawrence Folland)

  • Preparing for power outage in MC; have been discussing with TIS about power and networking.
  • We have some staff looking at the Windows 10 virtual desktop
  • Using Seashell for teaching in a web environment so you do not need run it in Linux; may be of interest to others.
  • Beginning to look at the process of moving the Math Drupal sites over to IST’s Drupal environment; possibly looking at beginning migration in the winter.

Client Services, IST (Bob Hicks)

  • Qualtrics site license will soon be official; will be assembling a team to look after training and communication for rolling out to campus.

Arts (Dawn Keenan)

  • Continuing to work on the response to our audit; looking to improve our ability to communicate the work we are doing.

Math (Robyn Landers)

  • Preparing for power outage in MC.
  • A circuit breaker tripped on the fifth floor of MC and took down a wiring closet and some nearby offices. We observed that only one of the two receptacles in the wiring closet was affected, and that the small UPS with all six switches on it was at 87% capacity with only two minutes of runtime on battery.Dave Aldwinkle will look into providing a second UPS and using the other receptacle to split the load and have more runtime on battery.

Science (Paul Miskovsky)

  • Software development has been busy; continuing to work on eValuate.
  • Have had some meetings with Steve Furino (and others) in Math to begin work on some applications for them; Math is contributing a lot of labour for this project.
  • Scinage work has slowed down now with other projects in the fore front; if there is interest among other areas in Scinage we are looking for funding for a coop to work on it. Contact Paul if there is interest.
  • A few groups are using MarkBox right now; currently working on some bug fixes. Next term there will be more development work on it.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on October 27, 2016 at 1:30pm, in EC2 111.