Author Archives: Bob Lim

Premium Antivirus for SJSU

Logo for Sophos Antivirus

SJSU IT has partnered with Sophos to provide advanced antivirus and digital safeguards at no cost to you. Sophos Home Premium has all of the same excellent desktop protection features as the enterprise version we use on campus: AI threat detection, ransomware protection, privacy protection, and more. Thanks to our strategic partnership, Sophos is offering this free to SJSU at a cost of $800,000. 

Because so many folks in our campus community are learning, teaching, and working remotely, we have to change the way we think about security. In the old paradigm, SJSU’s fortified campus network protected students, faculty, and staff who worked and conducted research from machines entirely within our environment. While connecting to the campus network via VPN or DaaS is still the most secure choice, we need to give more options to protect you wherever you work. COVID may have accelerated how we approach security, but our goal to have a mobile campus has always meant we’d need to expand our definition of security. This partnership will bring the kind of enterprise-grade security we use on university machines to your home devices. 

Download Sophos Home Premium today with your SJSU email address.

Thanks go to Michael Hastings for getting this ready for SJSU.

Best regards,
Bob Lim

Zoom Bombing at SJSU

Spartans,

With the start of a full semester spent teleworking and teleworking, I want to let you know about what we’re doing to prevent Zoom Bombing at SJSU. Zoom Bombing, the practice of “crashing” a zoom meeting or class, is something we’re taking very seriously. SJSU’s students deserve a safe virtual learning environment that fosters an open, interactive learning atmosphere.

Because this kind of action triggers serious repercussions in the traditional classroom setting, it will have similar repercussions in the virtual classroom. To some, Zoom Bombing may just seem like a prank, but it’s a malicious activity that disrupts the education environment. Unfortunately, Zoom Bombing is usually committed by individuals with authorized access to a session, rather than outside agents or someone sneaking in thanks to poorly configured security settings. We’ve enabled the option for Zoom hosts to require authentication for participants, a strong protection against potential Zoom Bombing.

ZOOM AUTHENTICATION

Should a student participate in an activity that substantially and materially disrupts the normal operations and infringes on the educational rights of the community, the University may issue any of the following sanctions that it believes are proportional to the behavior: restitution; educational and remedial sanctions; disciplinary probation; suspension; and/or expulsion. Any reported instance of Zoom Bombing will be thoroughly investigated, and we’ll use all available power to ensure we identify bad actors.

To all of the tens of thousands of students who have made the transition to online learning and to all the thousands of faculty who are now instructing remotely, we’d like to thank you for helping foster a community of support throughout our now virtual university.

If you have any questions about Zoom Bombing or about our disciplinary policy, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Thank you,

Alexandra D. Froehlich, M.A.
Director of Student Conduct & Ethical Development
Deputy Title IX Coordinator

Hien Huynh
Information Security Officer
SJSU IT

CARES Act Purchases Update

Dear Colleagues,

I want to provide you with an update on the technology equipment we secured through the CARES Act. Firstly, I want to thank SJSU’s academic leadership for helping us identify and define each college’s needs; thanks to them, SJSU IT was able to make more informed equipment purchases.

Vin, Charlie, Patrick, and I reviewed those requests and collaborated to purchase a wide array of general equipment as well as specialized inventory through the CARES Act. All general items that college deans have requested have been approved to order and will be on-hand and ready for the start of the Fall semester. The following have already arrived and are readily available through the SJSU IT equipment loaning service today:

  • Laptops
  • Hotspots
  • Webcams
  • Headsets
  • Tripods
  • Chromebooks

Other items will also be arriving in the next week or two and will be ready through the equipment loaning service as well. In the meantime, we do have extra, should our students need it now. These include:

  • USB Microphones
  • Adjustable Laptop Stands
  • USB Keyboard/Mouse Combos
  • USB Mice
  • Monitors

Team can put in a request by calling 408-924-2888. SJSU IT will manage, track, and distribute general items (laptops, hotspots, mice, etc.) and software licenses so that we can optimize limited resources and maximize utilization. College/unit-specific items, like Wacom Tablets and ProTools licenses, will go to the college/unit that requested it through your college techs. Similar to last semester, we plan to communicate to our students, faculty, and staff about our offerings.

We’ll also work closely with MLK Library so that they have an inventory of general equipment on-hand for students. Big thank you to Christine Mune for being so collaborative in support of our students.

Rather than buying all of the requested items at once, we’ll make an initial purchase, monitor inventory, and purchase more when inventory for an item is below a certain threshold. Due to budget constraints, we want to be sure that we don’t purchase excess inventory.  Therefore, keeping an accurate inventory is critically important to ensure that our students have access to the equipment they need.

Arranging this and getting everything ready in time for Fall start was a huge collaborative effort. I want to make sure that I thank all of the IT staff across the entire campus, both SJSU IT and the distributed IT staff. Without everyone working together and quickly, this wouldn’t be possible for our faculty, students, and staff.  I also want to thank Bruce Gardner, who has been coordinating the effort and helping manage questions from across campus. Lastly, thanks go to Vicky Van Leer, Jewel Rodeo, and Susan Huang, who are working days and nights getting our equipment ready. Jason Ferguson, Sharon Watkins, Brent Jones, Joseph Chou, and our entire IMS Team (Darlene Bargas, Devona Williams, Trevor Wylie, Daniela Zopiyatle, John Hanley, Cameron Myers, Fred Asuncion, Rod Maciel, Andy Yeung, Frank De Fanti, Phil Braverman, Danny Vo, Bruce Kelbert) put in a lot of work to get this ready for Fall. This group deserves our applause. 

You can view our inventory, request equipment, and get more information at http://sjsu.edu/equipmentcheckout. Because of the high demand for laptops, we’re asking folks to email classroom-support@sjsu.edu or call us at (408)-924-2888 to set up an appointment.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me.

Regards,
Bob Lim

New SJSU Event Calendar

Dear SJSU Campus Community,

Our campus will be implementing a new university-wide Event Calendar on July 29. 

You have shared with me the need to replace our existing calendar because it’s over a decade old and it’s missing a lot of features that have become standard over the years. It is not mobile friendly, it’s difficult to search, and it doesn’t integrate or work with social media or personal calendars. That’s why SJSU IT collaborated with groups from across the university to identify a solution that meets the needs of our students, faculty, staff, and university community in a major way. 

The first thing you’ll notice is the look. It’s updated with better design, it’s mobile friendly, and it’s much more visual. Each event can now include images, a flyer, or an embedded map. 

But the biggest new feature, by far, is the updated categories and hashtag system for better filtering so you can find the events that matter to you. You can filter by date, event type, topic, audience, trending, and more. You can subscribe to these feeds and get notifications and updates when a new event is posted. So, if you’re a student who lives on campus, you can set up a feed of events that are student-focused and on campus. Or if you’re faculty, you can set up feeds for events in your field or professional development opportunities. 

The new calendar integrates better with existing communication and calendar platforms, too. Events are now exportable to personal calendars like Google Calendar and Outlook, so event details are carried over without any copying and pasting. Hosts can also link events to their social media accounts, giving groups another route to drive engagement. 

If you’re using the calendar while you’re logged in with your SJSU ID, you’ll find a “My Events” profile page, accessible from an icon in the top right of the calendar page. There, you can view your feeds, see which events you’ve registered for, and view past events as well. 

Available on July 29, you can reach the new calendar in the same way as the prior calendar — from the Events Calendar tile in one.SJSU, or at events.sjsu.edu. Additional information and training is available at www.sjsu.edu/eventcalendar.

I also want to take a moment to thank all the folks who have worked with us together to identify and implement this new event calendar:

Campus Unit Individual Campus Unit Individual
Student Affairs Donna Mae Rizando Strategic Communications Monica Bosque
Student Affairs Rob Drury Strategic Communications Felicia McKee-Fegans
Student Affairs Jordan Webb Strategic Communications Michelle Frey
Student Affairs Erlinda Yanez Athletics Ryan O’Rourke
Student Affairs Angela Iraheta Athletics Blake Sasaki
Academic Affairs Gina Marin Hammer Theatre Chris Burrill
Academic Affairs Bethany Winslow Hammer Theatre Maria Bones
Academic Affairs Sally Ordonez Hammer Theatre Anthony Sutton
Academic Affairs Jennifer Redd Hammer Theatre Hannah Hudgins
College of Science Cher Jones MLK Library Lynda Nguyen
College of Humanities and the Arts Fred Cohen MLK Library Sylvia Guel Ruiz
College of Humanities and the Arts Lucy Yamakawa Cox MLK Library Leslie Seacrist
College of Graduate Studies Jennifer Nathan MLK Library Mariah Ramsour
University Personnel Tamela Sullivan Office of Diversity Fernanda Perdoma-Arciniegas
Associated Students Trevor Large Student Union Amy Guerra-Smith

If you have any questions about the Event Calendar, please don’t hesitate to contact the IT Service Desk online or by phone at 408-924-1530.

Regards,
Bob Lim

SJSU IT Phishing Awareness Program Starts June 30

Colleagues,

Next week, our Information Security Office will begin their Phishing Awareness Program in support of our Technology Recovery Plan, building on our cybersecurity layering strategy.

As part of this program, our staff, faculty, and students will periodically receive simulated phishing emails that imitate real attacks. These emails are designed to create a realistic experience without putting employees or the university at risk for a security breach. Employees who respond to the fake phishing attempts are directed toward training and resources to help them recognize phishing attempts in the future without shaming anybody.  We’ve run this program multiple times over the last few years and the results have been great. The Information Security Office will now operationalize this procedure quarterly because a knowledgeable user base is a strong defense against cybercriminals.

This program is critical because many of our faculty, staff, and students are working and learning remotely, where security safeguards are not as robust as on our campus network.

Faculty and staff were notified about the program in a campus-wide email on April 22 and prior messages. We’ll send out five such email phishing simulations over the next six months, timed to avoid the first two weeks of school, finals, and other critical events on campus, as part of our normal business process.

1. Staff Only: June 30, 2020
2. Staff Only: July 30, 2020
3. Faculty & Staff: September TBD
4. Students Only: October TBD
5. Faculty & Staff: November TBD

SJSU IT will redact the identifying information on those that responded and offer security training for departments with higher susceptibility rates. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Thank you,
Bob Lim