Information Services

In partnership with the Registrar’s office, the Application Services Team recently rolled out a Third-Party Access system for students.

Third-Party Access is a convenient and secure system that enables students to share selected academic records with third parties (parents, employers, graduate schools, etc.) via a personalized online portal. In DePauw’s system, items that can be shared with a third party include the advising transcript, class schedules, billing statements, financial aid awards, and grade reports.

A student accesses the Third-Party Access portal by selecting the Third-Party Access link in e-Services. Within the Third-Party Access portal, you can create new accounts, view the access logs of existing accounts, update or deactivate existing accounts. To create a new account, you simply create a username and password for the account, identify the items that account should have access to, and then share the username, password, and account login page address ( https://www.depauw.edu/e/thirdparty) with your selected “third party.”

More info about Third-Party access is available at http://www.depauw.edu/admin/registrar/thirdparty.asp.

Technology support for students at DePauw, formerly known as START, has a new name: “Student Technology Support”

Student Technology Support  offers workshops, access to Web-based training, and one-on-one consultations for all students. Program staff also work with faculty members to provide specific course-related technology training through in-class work.

Learn more about Student Technology Support at www.depauw.edu/it/student or contact Michael Gough, michaelgough@depauw.edu, 765-658-1094

Information Services does not yet provide support for Mac OS X v10.6. We recommend that you do not upgrade to Snow Leopard until later in the year.

Our research has shown that the Novell Netware network does not currently support Mac OS X v10.6 and the following network applications will NOT work:

* The Groupwise email client
* Printing to departmental or public networked printers
* Using aliases to access network drives (P:, I: and U:)
* Groupwise messenger

What’s the timeline?

According to Novell’s support timeline, updates that will make Netware compliant with Snow Leopard will be available sometime in mid-Fall. After those are available and we have confirmed that OS X v10.6 works on our network, we will notify the campus and begin providing support for it at that point.

Once we are prepared to support Snow Leopard, our campus license will allow us to install it on any University-owned computer that meets the minimum system requirements noted by Apple (http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html.) Students can purchase the upgrade directly from the Apple Web site.

What if your new computer came pre-installed with Snow Leopard?

If your new computer came already installed with Snow Leopard or you have already upgraded to Snow Leopard, following are alternative methods for using some of the network applications that are not compliant:

* DePauw e-Mail –Use http://tigermail.depauw.edu
* Accessing network drives (P:, I:, U:) – Use http://netstorage.depauw.edu
* Printing to networked printers – Email the document to yourself, then use a public lab computer to print it

If you have further questions or comments, contact the HelpDesk, helpdesk@depauw.edu.

Contributed by Michael Gough, Instructional Technologist and Coordinator of START and Bernie Timberman, Senior Network and Systems Administrator

Spam is becoming more prevalent in the cyber community every day. Many viruses and identity thieves rely upon spam email to spread their schemes. Therefore, to prevent many viruses and possible spyware infections, DePauw has invested in two robust spam filters. These filters work very well, especially given the volume of emails that come into DePauw. However, it is not perfect and users should still scan attachments for viruses and spyware. Also, be careful when clicking on links in emails; many spammers use these links to take you to Web sites that can steal information from your computer.

The following offers a perspective of how much of our email really is spam, helps you understand how this system works, and give you an idea of how your contributions can assist our spam filter system.

DePauw uses two Barracuda Model 400 spam filters to trap spam, viruses, and Denial of Service attacks. Denial of Service attacks are email attacks that are designed to overwhelm an email server and deny its functionality for its users. Our filters are configured to update their spam and virus definitions hourly. This information is combined with known spam messages identified by the HelpDesk. Below is a graph from one of the filter’s recent performances.

Notice how only a very small fraction of the total is allowed to be delivered to the recipients’ email boxes. The spam filters actually have a 12 step defense layer and a load balancer equalizes the work between the two filters so that one of them is not overwhelmed with too much volume.

The last step (Spam Scoring) is modified daily by the DePauw community. We input spam messages that are received by the HelpDesk from users to strengthen the spam filtering. Therefore, you can help our filters become more efficient by sending any spam that you recieve to the HelpDesk. This will help all computer users prevent viruses and cybercrime on DePauw’s campus.