Information Systems Connection

With several EMU email accounts having recently been compromised because the EMU mailbox owners were tricked into giving away their passwords, I feel I need to, again, remind the campus community that you should never, never, never give away your EMU password.  Did I mention NEVER?

Email messages are being sent to @emu.edu email addresses nearly every day with very clever messages that attempt to trick employees and students into thinking they need to reply or click on a link to go to a web page and provide their username and password.  Our systems block many of these but some inevitably get through our filters.

These are called “phishing” email messages which attempt to have you disclose your EMU email password.  The “phishers” want your username and password so that they can access your email account, not necessarily because they want info about you – although that could be the case in some rare circumstances.  Most likely it is because they want access to an email account from which to send spam – and when that happens to an EMU email account we are ALL put at risk of not being able to send email – because the big email processors (Google, Microsoft, Verizon, AOL, Yahoo) will quickly “blacklist” email servers that they see sending spam.  And the process of getting removed from a spam server blacklist is very difficult.

You can absolutely count on the following to be true:

1. Information Systems will NEVER ask for your password.
2. Information Systems will NEVER send you an email telling you that there is a problem with your account.
3. Information Systems will NEVER send you a link** to a page where you need to re-enter your username and password to “reset” your account.

Please – “just hit delete” whenever you see an email message telling you that something is wrong with your EMU account and you need to “do something” to fix it.  First, our systems would not have these kinds of problems and, second, if there is ever some kind of problem with your account we will NOT use email to communicate with you to resolve it.

I am baffled as to why users continue to be tricked by these messages.  Could it be that we are all drowning in email and we “just want to get through them” and which causes us to zone out and we don’t really stop to think about what we are doing when one of these trickery messages appear?

Slow Down!  Think!  Hit Delete!

Don’t fall for the clever come-on by the phisher!  Everyone is counting on you to “do the right thing” – JUST HIT DELETE!

** We may send you a reminder that your account password will expire in “X” number of days but our instructions will always be to go to MyEMU (my.emu.edu) and then click on the “Royal Password” link on the left column and follow the directions to change your password.

Broadcast email messages are those sent to everyone, all-students and non-students @emu.edu. Any EMU employee can send to these email addresses. Info Systems receives unsolicited feedback periodically from the campus community that is often critical of the number and kinds of broadcast messages sent. I offer the following comments for the campus community to consider:

1. SGA reps on the Info Systems Planning Committee (ISPC) consistently tell us that students do not regularly read EMU email messages, and many always ignore “all-students” messages, mostly because they consider these messages “internal spam”.
2. Students and employees can “opt-out” of broadcast messages by visiting the email broadcast options page.  Urgent broadcast messages are sent to everyone-urgent, all-students-urgent and non-students-urgent @emu.edu addresses and are not subject to the opt-out provisions of the system. Only a limited number of authorized persons can send “urgent” broadcast messages.
3. Before sending a broadcast message, senders are urged to consider alternative communications venues. These are discussed in the Broadcast Communications section of the Info Systems HelpZone (www.emu.edu/is/helpzone) and include using the EMU Web Events Calendar and EMU eClassifieds.
4. Our broadcast email system is aging and due for a major upgrade which will be part of an overall email system upgrade sometime in the next two years.  As part of our planning process we will be considering a wide spectrum of communications resources, some of which could replace current broadcast email use.
5. When sending broadcast messages, we recommend that you:
   1. Keep the message short and succinct.
   2. Proof-read the message carefully.  Consider sending it to yourself first to make sure it says what you want it to say.
   3. If attaching a file, PDF files work best (and they are generally smallest). All EMU-owned computers can create PDF files.  If you don’t know how to do this, contact the IS Helpdesk.
   4. Send to the most narrowly defined list.  Broadcast email lists are described on the Broadcast Communications web page.
   5. Use “plain text” format.  Because our broadcast email system is aging it often cannot format full HTML messages properly and the result is “a bunch of garbage”.  There is no way for you to know what will format correctly and what won’t (in this case, sending a sample message to yourself does not use the same “email engine” that broadcast messages use).

To summarize: Think carefully as you consider whether to send a broadcast email message.  If you decide you need to send a broadcast message, take some time to carefully write it.  Review the information on the Broadcast Communications web page to determine how best to send your message.

EMU relies heavily on its Internet connection for a wide spectrum of resources and functionality.  As of December 2011, the campus uses a 45mbps metropolitan Ethernet connection which costs about $50,000 each year.  This is a relatively low amount of bandwidth for an institution our size because, for a number of reasons, Internet bandwidth in our area is very expensive.  A “data traffic shaper” management appliance is used to ensure that this scarce resource is available to those who need it most to fulfill their institutional responsibilities.  During traditional work-hours (Mon-Fri, 8am – 5pm) prioritization is given to faculty and staff and outside of these hours the full capacity of the connection is made available to the residence halls.

The types of Internet use determines how much of the connection an individual user uses.  Low bandwidth uses include email and casual web surfing. Bandwidth increases significantly for “streaming” activities such as listening to music and watching videos.  Some of the most intense use of bandwidth occurs with streaming video from movie sources such as NetFlix.  For this reason we block NetFlix in computer labs.

We evaluate our Internet connection needs each year during the budget planning process and project what kind of a capacity increase we should build into the budget.  Because of the tight budget situation this year (2011-12) we did not increase our Internet capacity in September.  The result is that our Internet connection is now “maxed-out” most of the day (i.e. from about 10am through mid-night).

We are in the process of determining whether to re-prioritize some budget areas to allow for an purchasing an increase to our Internet bandwidth but we also know that the campus community will use whatever capacity is available.

Special Note to Faculty/Staff: Because you are given “top preference” during traditional work-hours, please do NOT use your computer during these times to connect to “entertainment” kinds of web resources.  As examples, this means streaming videos (e.g. NetFlix, Hulu, Crackle, etc) and streaming audio (e.g. Pandora, Internet radio stations, etc).