Students battle Facebook malware with security app

Facebook accounts for about 5 percent of all phishing attacks.

An application designed by a University of California Riverside student duo has a built-in customer base: the thousands of Facebook members whose accounts are littered with spam and malware every day, along with college IT directors afraid those hacker postings will harm the campus’s network.

Even the most vigilant Facebook members can miss malware posted to their account when hackers use stolen user names and passwords to spread harmful links using enticing deals like free Apple iPads or Southwest Airlines flights, or advertising supposed video of Osama Bin Laden’s death.

Read more about Facebook in higher education……Read More

How to lead change successfully in uncertain times

Author and motivational speaker Simon T. Bailey advised campus leaders how to thrive in times of change.

Author and motivational speaker Simon T. Bailey has some advice for how campus leaders can thrive in an era marked by rapid change and disruptive technologies: Focus on people, process, and problems.

Bailey was the opening keynote speaker at the 40th annual conference of the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education (ACUTA), held in Orlando April 3-6. The conference brought together nearly 300 campus technology specialists from across North America to learn about the latest trends and new developments in delivering voice, video, and data services to higher-education stakeholders.

The theme for this year’s conference, “Succeeding in the New Reality,” was a nod to the many challenges facing colleges and universities today, including cuts in federal and state education funding that make it harder to invest in campus IT infrastructure—as well as the accelerating pace of change in education and technology. And it was this latter challenge that Bailey’s keynote sought to address.…Read More

Facebook malware threatens campus web security

Hackers have turned to social media sites in recent years.

Students will click on just about anything posted to their Facebook walls—a social media habit that has brought a flood of malware to college campus networks.

These deceitful Facebook links—posted by hackers who have stolen student login information—have become a primary concern among campus technology leaders, and some colleges and universities are using security programs that isolate student computers before they do damage to the entire campus network.

Much like hackers have used suspicious eMail messages to solicit personal information from web users, spammers are now “clickjacking” Facebook accounts and posting links to friends’ Facebook pages.…Read More

Universities find the virtualization sweet spot

Server virtualization has become a primary energy-saving strategy for campus technology departments.

There hasn’t been much opposition to ridding college campuses of clunky, energy-guzzling server racks, campus technology chiefs say, although creating virtual servers could result in an unwieldy mess if ed-tech staff aren’t careful.

Colleges and universities, like much of the private sector, have gravitated toward virtual servers in recent years—a move that lets campus technology officials clear the piles of servers that collect over time, cut down on electricity use, and satisfy faculty requests for more servers in less time.

The largest research universities and small private colleges alike have gone virtual with their campus’s servers, meaning the machinery is managed in a distant data center, for example.…Read More

College help-desk services lagging in tech use

Chat-based help desk services haven't taken hold in higher education.

University help-desk services need a technological makeover, according to a recent report that shows students and faculty at seven out of 10 schools can’t hold online chats with their campus technology support staff.

Tech-support experts said that while campus help-desk services are understaffed and overworked, an instant chat option—which has become commonplace in private industry—would be one way to help campus technology support staff answer frequently asked questions, known as “break-fix” and “how-do-I” queries.

Higher education had an overall first call resolution rate of 62 percent, just below the 64-percent average across all industries, according to a national report on technology help-desk services published Dec. 9 by support solutions company Bomgar.…Read More

The most popular higher-ed tech stories of 2010

eReaders like the Apple iPad gained traction in higher education this year.

Later this month, we’ll count down the 10 most significant higher-ed tech stories of 2010, as chosen by our editors. But first, here are the campus technology stories that you—our readers—deemed most noteworthy in the past year, as judged by the number of page views they received:

10. How to use higher education’s ‘new toy’: Social media

Campus technology officials in charge of social media efforts have come to a consensus: There are no social media experts, so keep experimenting with your school’s tweeting, linking, and posting until you’ve struck the right balance……Read More

Campus technology departments going green

Campus technology departments are reducing their environmental impact—and saving money—by consolidating servers.

Campus technology departments across the country are finding that investing in energy-efficient technologies has an economic benefit as well as helping to save the environment.

“We projected a 30-percent increase in power efficiency … and [are] looking at about $7,700 in annual savings,” said Daniel Lichter, director of data and network infrastructure at Saint Xavier University. Much of these savings have come from consolidating servers, Lichter said.

CDW Government LLC (CDW-G) surveyed 756 technology professionals for its 2010 “Energy Efficient IT Report” and found that three-quarters of respondents are working to reduce energy use in their IT operations. If current energy use rates don’t change, greenhouse gas emissions from data centers will outweigh those from the airline industry by 2020, the company warns.…Read More

Survey: Mac use growing on campus

The Mac operating system has made gains on Windows since 2003, particularly on college campuses.

Mac use in higher education jumped 18 percent from 2009 to 2010, according to a survey of North American colleges and universities—but supporting the popular Apple products alongside Windows devices in a cross-platform environment is still a nuisance for many campus technology officials.

The survey of 125 institutions, conducted by digital collaboration company Group Logic, says Mac use on campus is not expected to plateau any time soon: Campus technology leaders expect Mac use to rise by another 20 percent over the next five years.

Thirty percent of college students and one in four faculty members are Mac users, according to the survey. With Mac use on the rise, about 60 percent of college IT officials said the satisfaction of Mac users “had improved over the past year,” despite some problems with cross-platform integration.…Read More

College CIO academy: Translate the ‘techno babble’

College CIOs could retire en mass over the next decade, creating a huge challenge for educational technology leadership.

The sometimes indefinable role of a college’s chief information officer has become clearer for six campus technology staffers after a week of eight-hour days learning, among other lessons, how to communicate with higher-ups and manage dwindling IT budgets.

The college staff-turned-students attended Excelsior College’s first Center for Technology Leadership (CTL) program at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., where educational technology experts led classes on topics ranging from how to lead a campus technology department to understanding local, state, and federal rules and regulations.

This month’s program had nine attendees. Tuition for the week-long program was $2,500, and students stayed in the National Labor College’s dormitories.…Read More

Higher ed still prefers Gmail over competitors

Sixty percent of colleges and universities outsource campus eMail services.
Sixty percent of campus technology officials use eMail hosting services for their college or university.

Although Microsoft Outlook is the preferred eMail option for many community colleges, campus technology officials are still signing up for Google Gmail accounts for their students and staff services more than any other eMail hosting services, according to a national survey released earlier this month.

The Campus Computing Project’s 2010 survey, unveiled at the EDUCAUSE educational technology conference in Anaheim, Calif., on Oct. 13, shows that campus technology officials at private and public four-year universities and public four-year colleges use eMail hosting services from Google for their campus eMail accounts doled out to students, faculty, and staff every year.

Nearly 60 percent of survey respondents from public universities who use eMail hosting services said their campus uses Gmail accounts, with 35 percent using Microsoft Outlook and 5 percent using Zimbra.…Read More

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