CIO Constituent Group

Colleagues,

  I have a question regarding a very large third party CRM vendor.  As expected, the vendor allows users (leads/applicants) to set up password-protected accounts to enter in general and sensitive information about themselves and eventually use this and additional information to submit an application to the institution.  We (Tech staff) have recently learned that the user passwords are stored in clear text, and are available to the employees in admissions who work on the system.

  We have asked about encrypting the passwords, and the vendor has told our folks that no one else in higher education is encrypting passwords and that it would be difficult, leading our admissions/enrollment management folks to question whether or not this is a “best practice”.  I think it is simply being prudent, and that there is...

Dear Colleagues,

The start of the semester has brought us numerous problems with students not being able to authenticate to our wireless portal to access our network and the Internet.  I’m curious how other campuses control WiFi access.  Specifically, are you forcing authentication?  Do you allow students to use the wireless without any authentication/registration?

Thank you.

Michael S. Hoffman

Executive Director for Information Technology

St. Bonaventure University

mhoffman@sbu.edu

www.sbu.edu

As Mark suggested in his post, this is a good discussion to have in Philadelphia at the annual conference. In fact, Brad has agreed to facilitate a discussion on Wednesday October 18^th from 3:30-4:20 pm in room 201C. The session is a new approach for this year’s conference that we are calling “Open Space.” These sessions are intended to provide open space on the program so that CIOs and senior IT leaders can discuss hot topics, such as this one.

Beyond convening conversations, EDUCAUSE has been in discussion with third parties exploring options to bring demand aggregation services to members. The discussions are in the early stages so it is too soon to predict what will happen.

We have talked about aggregating demand and ways of getting better pricing as well as terms and conditions from providers over the...

I guess there is comfort in knowing “we are not alone” in dealing with Adobe license changes – but there is high dissatisfaction (at least on my part…) in the direction their licensing is moving.

We have been long-term CLP customers and have seen:

·         flip-flops from concurrent-use to NO concurrent-use

·         product bundles that have shifted over time, sometimes without much logic.  certain standalone products that are price prohibitive if purchased outside of a bundle with stuff you don’t want or need.

·         many years of paying annual maintenance for products – now to be told that is no...

Pardon me if this has already been asked…

I’m curious if other colleges and universities grant admin access to desktop or laptops owned and managed by the college and used by faculty or staff.  We currently install whatever they need for them and maintain an inventory of all software installed.  We track licensing etc.  We are hesitant to give people admin access to their machines, but more and more they want to be able to do installations to demo products, get updates that we may not have installed yet, etc.

Just wondering if we’re being overly restrictive.

Thanks for your feedback, Dennis