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CNS /Update Newsletter Feature
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The UF IT community is packed with talented people who know their stuff. The Peer2Peer training session held Wednesday, March 30th in Room 316 at the Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, turned out to be a great showcase for that knowledge.
The relaxed afternoon of seminars, sponsored by the Information Technology Training Committee, provided updates on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Windows Update "Slipstreaming", and Spam Filtering. This session was the latest in an ongoing series of peer training designed to supplement vendor-sponsored training. It's a great way for our own experts to share knowledge and to reduce training-related travel and other costs.
Peer2Peer participants take part in lively discussion at the March 2005 workshop.
John Madey of CNS Telecommunications spoke about the enterprise-wide communications solution utilizing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Madey's talk emphasized the benefits of VoIP services. Among the benefits:
Maximizing UF’s network investment by fully leveraging existing network infrastructure
Eliminate separate networks for voice and data
One “line” to the desktop
Simplify and reduce costs of ongoing network administration
Improve staff efficiency (Do more with the same number of or fewer people)
More services on same network = lower operating costs
For more info on VoIP, see http://www.it.ufl.edu/telecom or send e-mail to John Madey at jmadey@ufl.edu.
Jordan Wiens, CNS Network Security Engineer, talked to the group about Slipstreaming. According to Wiens, this means installing, patching, securing, and tweaking a new Windows installation in one step designed to allow a new or reconfigured machine to have the latest security patches installed without connecting to a network.
According to Wiens, a machine connected to the Internet can be "infected" with malicious code "Faster than a Ferrari": literally, within seconds of connection. But how do you download the latest security patches without connecting to the Internet? That's where Slipstreaming comes in.
In a nutshell, the goal of Slipstreaming is three-fold:
Install where you can’t be attacked
Patch without being attacked
Finish configuring without being attacked
Steve Ulmer and Jordan Wiens confer as James Albury looks on at the March 2005 Peer2Peer Workshop.
Wiens offered several methods for accomplishing this goal, including manual (command-line), automatic (using tools), and somewhere in between these two. For specific information, see Wiens' complete PowerPoint presentation at http://www.at.ufl.edu/p2p/archive.htm
Open Systems Group (OSG) head Steve Ulmer offered a summary of spam, the problems it can cause, and what the OSG group is doing about it. Ulmer said that, based on studies that figure losses of productivity due to employees having to deal with spam, UF could be losing anywhere from $12 million to $49 million per year, just in lost time.
Add in other problems, including accidental erasure of legitimate messages, disclosure of personal or financial information due to phishers, and changes in employees' attitudes toward e-mail, and it becomes obvious that spam is a serious threat.
Ulmer discussed a number of ways in which institutions like UF are fighting back. Spam scoring for GatorLink mail, central-site measures (implemented on smtp.ufl.edu), real-time black lists, and other means have all been used to fight the scourge of spam.
Want to know how you can set up your e-mail to filter spam? Instruction for configuring several e-mail clients are available at http://www.cns.ufl.edu/spam.
For complete information on these sessions, see http://www.at.ufl.edu/p2p, or e-mail ittc-l@lists.ufl.edu.
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