On Thursday, February 23, 2023, The Office of Information Technology will be migrating its UCI Single Sign-On (SSO) Service away from a home grown legacy service, in favor of a modern standard based solution. Currently both servers are active and intertwined, enabling users to access a variety of different online services at UCI without having to sign in multiple times.
This move allows UCI easier integration with vendors/3rd parties, provides a higher capacity service, can potentially reduce application development overhead and is also widely supported amongst Higher Education, which will allow for easier research and collaboration opportunities with other Universities.
While we don’t anticipate any interruptions for our campus community currently utilizing SSO, bookmarks and links to login.uci.edu may stop working after Thursday and may need to be updated.
Additional information about this project can be found on the OIT website. If you experience any issues on or after Thursday please review the OIT Knowledge Base Article or contact the OIT Help Desk at oit@uci.edu.
The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is modernizing file storage for UCI, in a plan that includes migrating and storing files securely in Microsoft OneDrive. PC users will be migrating first, with Mac users migrating later this year.
Why Is This Happening?
Increase Security
Microsoft OneDrive provides tools for logging and auditing access to important information that are beyond the capability of our current tools.
Automatic Backup + Protection
After the migration, you’ll no longer have to worry about backing up your local files, as this will begin happening automatically. Storing files in the cloud ensures you won’t lose local files due to your computer crashing (or being run over on an especially unlucky day).
Easy Access
Instead of accessing your important files through the VPN, you can easily access them through any device.
Secure Collaboration
OneDrive makes it easy to share your files and collaborate with your colleagues in real-time
To prepare for your scheduled migration, it’s important to sync your files (back them up). We will ask you to sync at least three times before your migration, in order to ensure all of your files are moved properly. By the end of this week, you’ll begin seeing a pop-up message on your computer notifying you if you’ve gone longer than seven (7) days without backing up (syncing).
Migration Communications
You will hear from us once a date for your initial migration has been scheduled. We will walk you through the process and provide additional information regarding the migration.
Seamless Transition
OIT will transition your files to OneDrive automatically. After migration, you will continue to work on your files and save them as you always have with no change in your workflow.
Are you your department’s resident techie? Do you want to stay up to date with the OneDrive migration? Sign up to be a Cloud Champion and share your input on your department’s OneDrive Migration! We’d love to bring you to the table.
OIT continues to make progress on the Email Security Initiative that was announced last Fall, with a focus on reducing campus risk related to email. This has included implementing advanced email content protection with Proofpoint Phase 1, integrating Duo multi-factor authentication with UCI Gmail, disabling insecure protocols to access Gmail and O365, and first steps toward decommissioning legacy ES Mail (aka Webmail).
No action is immediately needed by you, and these additions should not affect normal email workflows. However, UCI faculty, staff, and students who have any questions regarding these changes are able to contact the OIT Help Desk at oit@uci.edu or by visiting the Help Center.
As always, OIT asks that the UCI community protects themselves and UCI by following the email safety guidance and continuing to report suspicious/phishing emails to spam@uci.edu.
Please contact security@uci.edu with any questions or concerns related to this initiative.
The Office of Information Technology, in partnership with UCI’s Public Records Office, begins its Annual Data Inventory on February 4, 2022, requiring all UCI campus employees to take steps towards ensuring UC Irvine data housed on their computers is secure.
All UCI staff and faculty have a duty to safeguard the security and privacy of information entrusted to them at UC Irvine. UC categorizes information based on the protection level it requires, according to risk. These protection levels (P1 – P4) for institutional information and resources are defined on the OIT Security website: Information and IT Resource Classification.
Data Minimization: Unless law, policy, business, or research needs require storage of P3 or P4 data, it should be eliminated. Good data hygiene includes deleting P3/P4 data in a way that is consistent with the UC Records Retention Schedule and UCI Institutional Information Disposal Requirements. Reducing the amount of data reduces the risk of a breach.
Data Mapping: If data must be preserved, it must be properly secured. The first step in safeguarding data is for staff and faculty to assess what data they have. This past year the campus needed to adapt to hybrid work, making it more important than ever to examine where/how information is stored.
Before Friday, March 4: UCI staff and faculty should review electronic devices under their control (including tablets, phones, and removable media) and remove or secure any files or records that contain protected information. These data elements should not be stored in personal or unapproved cloud services.
Staff and faculty collecting, using or storing P3 or P4 data electronically or on paper should inform their Unit Information Security Lead no later than Friday, March 4. Security leads maintain an inventory of data resources to facilitate risk assessment and compliance with law and policy and will help determine the best way to protect specific data.
Throughout October, OIT Security will be hosting events, sharing resources and providing helpful tips on how each member of the UCI community can protect themselves and the University from cyber threats. Do Your Part. #BeCyberSmart.
