News

What is happening? In December 2019, IST announced an initiative to decommission the Central Authentication Service (CAS). Having worked with website/application owners to move most affected systems to the centrally supported web-based authentication service, Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS), CAS will be disabled on January 20, 2021.

What is the impact? No impact to end users is expected. Sites that are unable to move to ADFS at this time have been added to an approved-use list. Users will continue to log in to these sites as normal.

Questions or concerns? Please contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca. 

A message from Greg Smith, director, departmental and campus applications (IST)

Alpha testing begins

I’m pleased to announce the start of testing for the University’s next generation web platform, WCMS 3. Over the next four months, the WCMS 3 project team will lead campus web administrators, who have graciously volunteered their time, in a total of five rounds of Alpha and Beta testing. This testing is critical to identifying bugs and informing refinements that cannot be identified through our automatic testing processes. When released on April 26, 2021, the foundation of WCMS 3 will continue to be built upon, adding new features and functionality with an initial emphasis on all the core and custom functionality required to complete migrations from WCMS 2 to WCMS 3 by November 2022.   

IST’s Annual Report – Celebrating our 2020 achievements

The work and achievements of Information Systems & Technology (IST) are captured in this, 2020 Annual Report. The past year was very busy for IST. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the sudden and unplanned transition of an in-person, on-campus work environment, to a distributed experience, dependent on the ability to connect and collaborate remotely.

Resolved (Jan 6, 10:40 a.m.): Bell and Virgin mobile users should be able to receive Duo 2FA authentication phone calls again. Please note Duo calls may appear to be coming from Canadian phone numbers outside Ontario.

Questions or concerns? Contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.
 

What is happening? Bell and Virgin mobile users may be experiencing issues with receiving Duo 2FA authentication phone calls. IST is working with the vendor to resolve the issue and more information will be shared when available.

What do users need to do? Users can accept 2FA prompts using the alternative methods below:

• Duo Push: enroll your device by going to https://2fa.uwaterloo.ca/duo/enroll and accept Duo Push prompts using the Duo Mobile app
• Enter a Passcode: select the ‘Enter a Passcode’ option from the Duo Prompt screen to enter a passcode generated via the Duo Mobile app or via SMS
  • For VPN, use 'sms' as the second password to generate a passcode via SMS

Questions or concerns? Contact the IST Service Desk, helpdesk@uwaterloo.ca or ext. 44357.