Technology Leadership Council

Technology Leadership Council February 25, 2004

Attendees: TLC Voting Members: Keli Jones, Darren Everingham/Darren Everingham, KC Hundere, Gloria Stahmer, Bill Dehaan, Sharon Blanton, Edward Kelty, Mike Lewis, Victor Navarro, Cathlyn Hart/ Richard Lang, Rich Marmon

TLC Ad-hock Members Frank Gonzalez – Library Team Pat Case – Ocotillo Alan Levine – Ocotillo Paula Yslas – District Training Lisa Haar – Admin support TLC Guests

Meeting Rules Start on time, end on time Stay on track Monitor your own participation Limit side conversations Respect each other’s ideas and work One speaker at a time – don’t interrupt Be an active listener Honor confidentiality Disagree and clarify when appropriate Be willing to invest the time for inquiry when appropriate Consider the entire system Build shared meaning Keep an open mind Have deliberate patience Have Fun

Meeting 1:30 – 2:00 Special Discussion Objectives / Reclassification/Job Description Discussion – Jose Leyba Agenda: and Lorie O’Brien 2:00-2:30 TLC Subcommittees / Cross Committee Updates Subcommittee, ITS,  Agenda for College Visits – Ron Bleed or college team  TLC Goals for 2004 - Ed updates  ASG – KC Hundere ▪Cell phone vendors and Usage ▪ID Card Status  Media Leadership Group - Gloria Stahmer / Frank  Security - Carol Myers o January 2004 Meeting Minutes Attached  Networking - Rich Lang  Blackboard - Sharon Blanton and Mike Lewis  Inventory - KC Hundere  Identity Management Taskforce – Mike Lewis  Technology Standardization – Earl Monsour  Web Accessibility Standards – Carol myers District Departments:  ITS General Info – Lisa  Helpdesk – Keli Jones  Memo / LDAP – Yosef  Security Services - Carol Myers o Desktop Patch Management Results  Student Systems - Gary Nusbaum  Customer Support - Janet Gesin  Library – Janet Gesin (See next page)  Infrastructure Support – Earl Monsour  Networking (LAN/WAN/COX) - Bruce  Instructional & Information Access Systems - Miguel Corzo  Business Systems - Steve Creswell  Purchasing – Ren  District ITS Telcom – Jon Clark o ACD Discussion 2:30 – 3:30  TLC Budget for Joint Software Purchases – Ron We’ll priortize these Bleed and Keli Jones and get to what we  Browser Issues – Yosef Morgan can. The remaining  President’s visit– Bill Dehaan will be reviewed in  Altiris – Victor Navarro February

January 2004 Special Discussion on Reclassification Process Meeting Notes  Lori asked for us to be specific with our questions and if we had any questions about the process  Sharon had questions about how the PAQ was actually done because it seemed like what was written in the PAQs or the interviews really didn’t end up in the job descriptions.  If the goal was to update the job descriptions then that didn’t really happen in all the job descriptions  It was commented that people that do not manage people or budget, that when reading their job description, it was very devaluing to them. This is a general feeling that is pervasive across the district in the technology area.  Lori said that even though many people would like to see where everything is, that at this time, that is not really realistic because nothing is final yet and putting something out that is “partial” is really not appropriate.  Jose suggested that when all the recommendations are done and brought to CEC that Ron Bleed will help to be our “voice” when the final discussion is had.  Ron commented that this whole process started out to review technology positions and now this process has grown into evaluating all the MAT positions. This has really defused the focus on Technology and this might have caused some of the issues we are having today.  Lori suggested that we wait to see what happens when the final recommendations are proposed.  Is there anything that TLC should do at this point?  There should be more communication from the oversight committee on what is going on.  TLC would like to know what the current “Goal” of this project is at this time (because it seems to have changed from the original intent, was to consolidate jobs that are “alike” to help keep things more organized and well defined a cross the district.)  We would like a report of the overall outcomes of this project  There should be a “true” technology representative on the reclassification committee during next weeks meetings.  The MAT executive committee is meeting on 2/6/2004 @ 1:30PM in the governing board room. This is an open meeting and everyone is welcome to attend.  The consulting company didn’t go to any technology companies in phx or places like ASU to do a comparison for these job classifications and their saleries. They are going to five different community colleges across the country with “equivalent economic situations”. General Updates  Ron o ITS would like to come visit but he’d like to make this as productive as possible so input on what would be reviewed o Stratigic planning is well under way (Earl, Ron, and a few other on a new committee). They are putting materials together for the bond.  KC – ASG Meeting o There was discussion about the bond and preparing for questions about why we are purchasing technology that only lasts 4-8 years on a bond that lasts 20. o Cell Phone – KC is still collecting information. He is going to develop a process for GCC and he’ll report back to TLC o General maintenance of “items” is common across both groups (MS-Software or a fire extinguishers, it’s all annual maintenance) o Inventory -  Earl – Technology standards o Created three groups but did not assign a chair. These teams have not met yet. Ren is going to coordinate these activities o Earl asked if we were ready to start looking at a fourth team to standardize on the type of cell phone used in Maricopa. It was suggested that we create some policies first and then decide if want to go down this route at a future time.   Deans of Instruction – Recommended the purchase of Maple.  Bruce – moved to COX internet several months ago and all has been going really well. He’s ready to start moving the colleges to COX. There is a meeting tomorrow at the District office for anyone that would like to attend o The ASU connection is being removed and we’ll start transferring information to ASU via the internet  Jon o Qwest is going to lower the price of our PRIs $189/month less if we sign up for another five years. o ACD Issues – Jon did get a recommendation to FIX ACD o Band-Aid Fix - Take monitored numbers out of Fusion and move to CCIS o Long Term – Single ACD system running software Agent Anywhere 

Assignments: Who What When Everyone A copy of the college ASAP strategic plan Bill / KC Discussion of printing ID TBD card Ron / KC Work on getting the TLC members invited to the all Deans meeting. Ren Coordinate the three standardization teams Jon Discussion COX vs Next TLC Qwest phone service. Put together a pricing and features comparison chart for next meeting

Previous Meeting Carol Work with Pete to TBD change the admin regs to include the “college.edu” domain KC Research what the Next TLC – 12/17/2003 impact is to consolidate the Calendar servers Ed Add Carol’s Web ASAP Accessibility Standards group to the TLC subgroup list Victor Give a demo to the TLC TBD of CGCC’s identity management system Victor Altaris TBD Ron Talk to CEC about:

Issue Bin:  MS – Select Agreement – To be discussed at one of the next meetings  Ren asked the question about leasing and if anyone is interested (HP has a great trade up program)  Coordinating efforts for access cards so people who travel between campus’s don’t have to carry multiple cards (KC). Maybe Mike Mc Intier  Video conferencing needs to be included in the bond planning  Future agenda’s should have items specific to the bond planning  Is the TLC going to be working on the technology plan for the District office? Currently there is $95M reserved (this could and most likely will change in the future). o There should be a list of ideas that can be part of the district bond allocation.

What do we need  The TLC standards to the CEC to communicate  The TLC standards to the Maricopa “world” via the ITS newsletter and with whom?  The TLC recommendation to CEC about setting up a central budget for District wide purchases (starting with the Microsoft Agreement and NAV) Security Team Meeting Minutes January 2004

Members Present (There were many negative RSVP's to the meeting due to start of classes): Jonathan Trottier - MCC, James Quintero - SCC, Rebecca Ramirez and Trever Vittori - SMCC, Doug Harper - DO.

Incidents

Security Incidents are way down for the last month. This is primarily due to the absence of a substantial portion of students and faculty. However, improvements in patch management across the district as well as the new firewall rules protecting Maricopa are contributing to the decline. An increase is anticipated for next month as people return from vacation.

Incident Handling

Information Security Services is is the final stages of deploying a new Incident handling system. At Educause, Rod talked to some of the CERT Incident handling staff who recommended RTIR software. RT is a generic helpdesk/ticket tracking package that is highly customizable. Janet-CSIRT created a custom set of templates to run on RT called RTIR that incorporates many of the concepts in IO-DEF. This is a web based package written in Perl that stores incident data in a MySQL database. One of the interesting features of the software is email based IO. Carol and Rod are working on procedures and finalizing templates for the product. By adopting a product being developed by other CSIRTs, Maricopa will have a path to migrate to more sophisticated products based on IO-DEF and IT-MEF in the future. This will facilitate collaboration and information exchange among CSIRTs and Maricopa CSIRT.

Desktop Patch Maintenance

Automatic patch maintenance for desktop computers has been deployed throughout the distric office. During this deployment there were no substantial disruptions or problems for end users. Doug is working on some small bugs with some systems. Major effort needs to be focused on replacing or updating all Windows 98 and NT operating systems since they cannot be supported under this model.

Miscellaenous Items

Bookstore Vouchers - Jonathan Trottier asked if security could look at a pgp tool for use in sending student information from the Vax to Follett Bookstores for book vouchers. Follett does not have a mechanism in place for receipt of encrypted data, including sftp. Currently, all data is sent in the clear. The student data includes SSN's. Doug agreed to review the tool, and Carol Myers will talk with Gary Nusbaum to see if there are issues with trying to move forward with the transmission of student information to Follett in a secure manner.

Redhat Linux Licensing - James Quintero asked about the possibility of Redhat Linux licensing being pushed forward as a group in order to get a better price on the new pricing model for Redhat. Redhat has eliminated its $80 entry level software maintenance option. A similar service is now available for free as part of the Fedora project. Redhat now has its ES (Enterprise Server) package available for less than $200. The more stable development cycle and incorporation of better Java technology are big advantages. Over the next few months, all Redhat based security servers need to be upgraded to ES. Carol agreed to pole the STC members to see if there are enough license needs Maricopa-wide to be able to get a break in price. (Update since meeting: Some of the colleges are going with the Academic pricing model rather than the advanced, ES, support model. Maricopa needs 50 servers to get a price break and there is not enough at this time to get the discount.)

STC Team Conference - Jonathan asked if the STC was going to have a group conference opportunity like last year's trip to the Educause Security Professionals Workshop. Carol is on the Educause planning committee for the 2004 conference but does not have a security budget this year. She agreed to ask Ron Bleed if conference registration fees can be paid for by ITS this year as well. Here is the information on the 2004 Educause http://www.educause.edu/conference/security/2004/ (Proposal acceptance is closed even though there is a link.)

Blackboard/Midas - (This was discussed at the district office security committee meeting. It is included here as architecture information for the STC.) The Blackboard Midas deployment has consumed most of Information Security Services time for the last month. The majority of the issues have revolved around routing requirements of the load balancer and the incomplete definition of communication requirements of the environment. The resulting system however is quite good. It is a three layer system protected on the outside by a Cisco Pix blade and on the inside by a Redhat firewall. The diverse firewall strategy was recommended by the Fourth Stage audit and provided a higher degree of flexibility than could have been achieved with a sole source strategy. The three layers are general public, public touching servers, and non-public touching servers. This is consistent with SANS Defense in Depth or Cisco SAFE (which is essentially DiD with Cisco hardware). Due to synchronizing issues with the rapidly changing environment, the backup firewall is disabled and the private network firewall is running with only one node. This will be rectified once both Blackboard and Midas are in production. The backup firewall could be cut in manually in a few minutes if needed.

Meeting adjourned at 2:45pm.

Next meeting is Tuesday, February 5 beginning at 2:00pm in Room 128.

Carol Myers Director, ITS Security Services Information Technologies Services Maricopa Community Colleges http://www.maricopa.edu/security 480.731.8903