IT Insider: Office 365 Collaboration Tools Update

Microsoft Office 365 will be the next system to benefit from the additional security offered by Duo Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).

IT@UC rolled out Duo MFA for Microsoft Office 365 applications to all IT@UC employees during a successful pilot on Wednesday, April 10. Duo MFA will roll out to all university Office 365 accounts in the coming months.  

Multi-factor authentication provides a second layer of authentication to help protect your account, even if your password is compromised. If someone is attempting to login as you, Duo will alert you immediately. UC systems that currently require multi-factor authentication are Adobe Experience Manager (web content management system), AnyConnect (VPN solution used to log into UC’s network from off-campus) and UC Flex.

For more information on Duo, including how to enroll, view the Two-Factor Authentication webpage.

When accessing certain Office 365 tools you may be presented with an alternative sign in screen from Microsoft.

Enter your email address in the form of username@ucmail.uc.edu (for faculty/staff) or username@mail.uc.edu (for students) into this screen. You will be redirected to the UC login page to enter your username and password to gain access.

Over the next few weeks the following security measures will be incorporated into Microsoft Outlook that should help address the recent surge in phishing attacks and credential theft:
 
April 12: "Report Message" Add-in for Outlook
The Report Message add-in for Outlook and Outlook Web allows users to quickly and easily flag messages as Phishing or Junk and simultaneously report them to both Microsoft and IT@UC for further review.  This add-in will be deployed centrally and should automatically appear in Outlook 2016, 2019 and the Office 365 Outlook applications, as well as in Outlook Web. 
 
April 22:  IMAP and POP Disabled By Default
Legacy email protocols have been used in nearly all of the recent events where compromised mailboxes were used for phishing campaigns. To help prevent compromised mailboxes, the legacy email protocols POP3 and IMAP will be switched off by default for all new accounts.  At the same time, POP3 and IMAP will be disabled for any accounts that have not used either protocol in the past 60 days.  Going forward, IMAP and POP3 will only be enabled by request.
 
NOTE: All current IMAP and POP3 users will be "grandfathered" out of this policy, and will not be affected by this change.

For more information on how to keep your email secure, visit the Email Security webpage.

As of March 17, 2019, all Exchange email accounts for UC faculty and staff have been migrated to Office 365. Office 365 provides more than just email–all staff and faculty have access to the full Office 365 suite. Read more about the features and available training in the Office 365 UC News article.

NOTE: Departments who currently use Skype for Business for instant messaging or web conferences are encouraged to start using Teams instead, as Skype for Business will retire on June 1, 2019. For those who prefer a transition period, both Teams and Skype can run side-by-side.

Planning continues for the next university rollout of Office 365 functionality. In 2019, OneDrive will replace Box as the single cloud storage environment. Discussions on how to move university files from Box to OneDrive are currently taking place. Be on the lookout for more information about the migration, including the schedule, on the IT NEXT webpage.

Both online and in-person educational opportunities to learn about OneDrive are currently available through the Staff Success Center through SuccessFactors Learning.

AnyConnect replaced Pulse Secure as the university’s official Virtual Private Network (VPN) solution on Friday, March 1. Unsupported access to PulseSecure ends Tuesday, April 30, 2019.

Please send an email to ucnoc@ucmail.uc.edu by Friday, April 26, that includes the usernames of students, faculty or staff members who require unsupported access to PulseSecure beyond April 30. Users who continue to access PulseSecure and have not yet accessed AnyConnect will receive an email prompting them to make the update.

If you are experiencing issues with AnyConnect, please refer to the Troubleshooting guide for UC VPN or contact our Service Desk.

IT@UC Network and Telephone Refresh project team is upgrading all telephone systems at UC. To ease the transition and familiarize faculty and staff with the new system, IT@UC is providing a fully functional demo station as well as an onsite training option. Read the Phone Demo Station UC News article to discover how you can benefit from these services.

Several popular operating systems will reach End of Service (EOS) in the near future, including SQL Server 2008 (7/9/19), Windows 7 (1/14/20) and Windows Server 2008 (1/14/20). View a complete list of Applications and Operating Systems Reaching End of Service in 2019 and 2020. 

Please start appropriate planning to upgrade or decommission systems prior to these dates. 

University policy requires that information systems be maintained to protect against vulnerabilities. Systems that reach End of Service (EOS) will not receive security or non-security updates from the vendor, typically resulting in catastrophic vulnerabilities within a short period of time.

Please contact the UC Office of Information Security with any questions or concerns.

The UCFileSpace service is nearing retirement, and replacement solutions for file storage and web hosting are currently being developed. Over the summer, file storage and sharing will move to Office 365 OneDrive, and personal website hosting (homepages.uc.edu) will be relaunched as a standalone service. More information about these services, including migration instructions where applicable, will be distributed as they become available.
 
In order to facilitate the change, a successful round-table discussion was recently held to develop solutions for individual use case scenarios. If you work within UCFileSpace and missed the meeting, or have additional UCFileSpace needs that have not been discussed, please contact your local IT Manager. IT@UC teams will work closely with UCFileSpace users and IT Managers to keep them updated on all solutions developed.
 
Thanks for your support and feedback through this process in order to transition to an updated storage solution. Any questions about this process can be emailed to Russ Langford.

When a virus hit Hughes High School computers, ShareIT students learned about the teamwork response that makes IT work together in a crisis situation. Read more in the UC News article UC teaches high school students about real IT situations.