News

The next UC Davis Information Security Symposium has been scheduled for June 15-16, 2021. The event will present talks, labs and discussions on topics involving cybersecurity and privacy. The theme is “Adapt”—a continuing priority as campuses adjust to changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.       

Traditionally, the symposium meets on the UC Davis campus. However, due to the pandemic, the 2021 symposium will use a virtual format. 

Information and Educational Technology (IET) has made it a little easier for faculty, staff and students to learn about and order 170 campus tech services.

The change happened Oct. 15, when IET moved the UC Davis IT Service Catalog into the Service Hub, the central tech service website whose underlying software (ServiceNow) already supports the Knowledge Base, software catalog, and IT Express Service Desk help ticketing system.

Starting Oct. 29, you might start seeing "[Unauthenticated message]" appear in the subject line of some email messages that third-party email vendors send to your UC Davis email account.

The tag doesn’t automatically mean the message is spam, but it probably does mean the vendor needs to work with the campus to comply with UC Davis’ updated authentication process for such messages.

Zoom and Duo are the new names in campus cybersecurity this year, so they’re getting more attention. But to protect yourself from hacks and account breaches, you need to think about your habits as much as you do your technology.

As we enter the new academic year, here are three things you can do as a student to significantly cut your exposure to cyber-risks while you study at UC Davis. These ideas come from the UC Davis Information Security Office. To make your work and privacy even more secure, check out the additional ideas at the end.

Here’s an icebreaker you can use when waiting for your next Zoom meeting to begin:

What core part of UC Davis was viewed 3.28 million times on the first day of classes fall term?

Answer: UC Davis Canvas. The learning management system (LMS) logged that many page views on Sept. 30, a volume more than twice as large as last year’s.

Wireless printing has returned to campus, in limited locations because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

To welcome new students to campus, the IT Express Service Desk will stay open for extended hours during the first part of Aggie Orientation Sept. 25-29.

Update Sept. 21: Zoom now says it will not enforce a previously announced security requirement that all meetings have passcodes or waiting rooms starting Sept. 27. Instead, the company plans to introduce an opt-in administrative setting in November that would "ensure that all meetings have a passcode, waiting room, or 'Only authenticated users can join' " requirement, and "highly recommends" that locations adopt this setting.

The UC Davis Keep Teaching website, a collection of ideas and resources that emerged almost overnight last March to help faculty and TAs shift quickly to remote instruction, now offers a clearer path through its offerings.

On July 2, the site released a major update to the site’s Teaching section to make key resources easier to find, feature peer-to-peer comments from faculty, and present seven pedagogical topics that instructors should consider as they teach remotely.

As you likely know from the news, cyber-attacks are a continuing threat in all areas of modern life. The risk is serious enough that we may have to deal with a cyber-security incident one day.

UC Davis is advising researchers to double-check some of their security settings in the wake of ransomware attacks at UC San Francisco and two other universities.

UC Davis faculty, students, and staff need to upgrade to version 5.0 of Zoom before May 30 in order to continue participating in classes or other online sessions that use the videoconferencing tool.

Zoom released version 5.0 on April 27, and will not allow older versions of the tool to be used starting May 30. The new version, a major upgrade, includes security improvements and other enhancements.

The coronavirus is disrupting campus services, but the IT Express Service Desk is keeping a steady beat.

The campus tech service desk, with its analysts working remotely, continues to answer questions and requests for assistance on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. It will also observe those hours during spring break.

You don’t need to be on campus to enlist their help. If you’re a UC Davis faculty member, student, or employee, they’re open for you.

The campus is presenting four webinars for faculty daily today through Friday, March 13, on how to use Canvas to hold quizzes or exams online, communicate with students, or distribute video lectures.

Each webinar, presented by an instructional technologist in Information and Educational Technology, lasts one hour. The topics:

The campus has created a new website, Keep Teaching, for faculty thinking about moving at least some of their instruction online because of COVID-19.

No campus quarantines or closures have been announced, and any UC Davis information along those lines would be posted at the UC Davis coronavirus page. Instead, the new site offers faculty resources to: