Content Management Services – Center for Visual Computing is getting ready to deploy Vignette, a content management system for the campus community to maintain its websites. Work flow is consistent to content creation, and includes WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. Data resides on an Oracle database which allows multiple departments to share content of data and also allows content to expire. Currently, CVC staff is attending training with plans to provide service to the campus in April 06’.

Conference Management Application – C&C is in the process of developing a Conference Management Application which will allow departments and researcher to have conference attendees register online. The program will capture basic profiles necessary to register individuals, and will have the ability to receive credit card, FAU, and Purchase Order payments. The application has the capability for conference sign-up and payment processing by UNEX.

iGrade – Fall quarter testing went well as 228 courses and 76 faculty used iGrade. Faculty had to opt-in to submit grades. Classes will be listed when they opt-in and they will need to register the classes that they want to use iGrade for. Information will be passed onto the Registrar’s office to make them aware of which classes need manual entries into the Student Information System. More information and enhancements can be found at: http://cnc.ucr.edu/igrade. The next pilot test will take place in the winter quarter 06’.

iEval – The Scantron portion was piloted for faculty during the summer quarter, and worked successfully. We have a list of enhancements from Grad Division which includes an auto edit feature to be listed in the comment section, as well as other enhancements to make the process more efficient. The next step is to have everyone transition to using the online application and discard the use of manual forms. There are evals for TAs, faculty, professional advisors and by major. Online iEvals are now mandatory for TA's. The pilot group will make a decision after one full academic year of testing whether to make faculty iEvals mandatory as the pilot phase continues into the second quarter.

Extension Front End – A online registration program is being developed for University Extension students. The program will allow students to view courses offered, select them into a “shopping cart”, and pay online via credit card. Information will then be transferred to their Q2 Student Information System. Both systems will use Oracle as their database and this will facilitate the writing of stored procedures to work on both systems.

Anti-Virus Site License - In an effort to stay on-top of anti-virus products, we are now in the final pilot phase in preparation for a campus-wide release of the site license for Sophos AV. The software will be available at the central server for any faculty, staff or residence hall student to download using either Windows or Macintosh machine. A firewall component will be incorporated in the next release scheduled for year-end 2005.

Anti-Spyware Site License- Also in the final pilot phase for campus-wide release is a site license of the anit-spyware product from Webroot called SpySweeper. The software will be available at the central server for any faculty, staff or residence hall student to download only for Windows machines.

Research Technology Group – C&C in partnership with CNAS and the High Energy/Heavy Ion Physic Group has created a Memo of Understanding (MOU) for Technology Research Support. The initial objective is to provide support for deployment and operations of high-end, multiprocessor computational clusters. In addition, the collaboration will provide other research technology support, as time and budget permits, relating to high speed networking, visualization systems and services, storage systems, and code libraries and repositories. There will be direct faculty support relating to utilization of these technologies.

Sourcefire / Intrusion Detection System - C&C has installed new SourceFire equipment and is currently monitoring all wireless traffic and any traffic that transverses the UCR border. With plans to install additional network equipment the intent is to analyze traffic from three off-campus links along with other on-campus locations. Progress continues on automatically black-holing traffic from all systems outside UCR involved in port scanning of any UCR system. The final step will be TCP encrypted communications between Sourcefire and the black-holing system with implementation expected at the end of January. Current detection of intrusion is manual traffic analysis where offenders from on-campus are disconnected (port-off) and off-campus offenders black-holed.

Cisco Intrusion Detection Blade and MARS Evaluation – In Partnership with C&C evaluating College of Engineering has purchased a Cisco (formerly Protego) MARS (Monitoring Analysis and Response System) device. The appliance centrally aggregates logs and events from network devices (such as routers and switches), security devices and applications (such as firewalls, intrusion detection, vulnerability scanners, and anti-virus), hosts (such as Windows, Solaris and Linux syslogs), applications (such as databases, web servers, and authentication servers), and network traffic (such as Cisco NetFlow). The evaluation process is continuing, but the device looks promising for reducing the number of false positives when detecting intrusions, and allowing us to set up automated blocks of inappropriate traffic flowing onto campus and traffic leaving campus.

Nessus Scanning System (update) – Modifications continues to the web interface that will provide a way for people on campus to scan their desktop systems when they access the self-scan page. In addition, it allows network administrators to scan specific hosts or a range of hosts. Email notification when the scan is complete to the end-user and system administrator has been included. Other features include user friendly “English” language descriptions with plug management interface that will allow custom descriptions, periodic scans can be scheduled, selectable scan profiles (Windows, Web Server or Generic Server), web review of scan profiles and web view of scan reports. Administrators are now able to have different scanning profiles or now can create custom scans containing desired plug-ins.

Black Hole software - Based on work and ideas from Berkeley and UCSB, our black-hole web page allows us to identify off-campus machines as being non-routable to any on-campus machines, thereby preventing inappropriate traffic from entering the UCR intranet, eliminating an off-campus threat. This valuable tool protects on-campus resources from off-campus attacks and drops all traffic from identified hostile/infected systems. Automatically black-holing of excessive failed SSH logins has been successfully tested and is currently in a “test” production mode. Host history is now available via the web to authorized users.

Scripted port shutoff - Continues to have development with a backend database and soon will respond with automated port disconnection as a result of Sourcefire event(s). We have developed a script with a web interface that accepts as input a machine or list of machines (by IP), and locates its switch and port, and shuts it off. This is a substantial reduction in the amount of manual effort it takes to shut down infected campus machines. There are plans to have an automated port shutoff system. Currently ports behind bridging firewall cannot be disconnected, but plans are being made to be able to turn off these ports too.

Longitudinal Data Warehouse – C&C is expanding the Student Information Data Warehouse with several additional fields to allow query capabilities as well as provide considerably more list data. Developed in-house, version 2 is an enormous enhancement which provides summary mode functionality to retrieve an initial set of data, and drilldown display capability. List data is comprised of student’s information (i.e. admissions data, placement data, statistical data, enrollment data, and more), where query upon query can be generated to retrieve specified information even if the student’s information changes during his academic career.

Funding Allocated for Mainframe Upgrade – C&C has allocated funding to upgrade the mainframe to a z890 Model 150. We are in final negotiations for hardware and maintenance for a new mainframe system that will increase our capacity and speed.

On-line Holds (update) – The new on-line Hold feature is in production. Currently, users are building the repository of hold description and resolutions that will ultimately display to students via growl. Students will be alerted when there are holds against them when they sign onto GROWL. When logged in, the feature instructs the student to go to the comprehensive hold screen where he/she is able to see the holds that pertain only to them, along with instructions on how to clear holds.

On-line Transcript Ordering / Credit Card Payments (update) - Online Transcript ordering on GROWL allowing credit card payment is now in production. Students can order and pay for transcripts on GROWL. Within the first 2 weeks 163 payments have been processed, and 240 transcripts have been ordered by students..

Tools for Student Advising to be Investigated (update) - With Phase I of student enrollment/advising on GROWL complete and in production, we are in the process of evaluating the next phase. This phase will include enhanced tools for the advisors, to aid in the evaluation and advising process, as well as improvements to the Degree Audit System.

Preview Day – Student Computing Services (SCS), in collaboration with other departments within C&C hosted a table at Preview Day on October 29, 2005. Preview Day targeted prospective freshmen and transfer students, and introduced them to a wide variety of UCR Computing services and information was available via handouts such as iGuide bookmarks, the New Student Guide to Computing, and Getting Connected at UCR flyers. In addition, there was one-on-one interaction with Computing staff, and trivia games were available where students could win prizes by answering computing questions.

Understanding Technology at UCR: Tools, Tips, Techniques and Strategies – In Fall 2005 Student Computing Services (SCS), in coordination with Academic Computing, began a program of providing computing workshops to classes of freshman students upon faculty request. In October and November SCS conducted workshops teaching students about many important Computing services and issues. Workshop topics include campus applications such as Webmail use, iLearn, UCR’s wireless network, clickers, and computer security, the workshops are designed to help student’s transition from high school to university-level academic success.