March 3, 2004 Minutes

EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY

COMMITTEE

03/03/2004, 12:30-2:00 pm

ATTENDEES: Kim Chief Elk, Tom Dolen, Linda Elvin, Scott Heffner, Allison Lenkeit, Dan Mitchell, Willie Pritchard, Eric Rosenthal, John Swensson, Jaci Ward

GUESTS: Gerry Gyuire, Sharon Luciw, Tom Roza

Convened: 12:34 pm

1. APPROVAL OF THE MINUTES OF THE LAST MEETING

· Minutes will stand approved as posted

2. GENERAL NEWS - BRIEF UPDATE ON WIRELESS SUPPORT IN THE DISTRICT - SHARON LUCIW

· Last year several products that would secure wireless connections in the District were evaluated

The "Blue Socket Box" was chosen and is still under evaluation
It was installed in the KCI at FH and in the ATC at DA
There are a couple of wireless labs on the FH campus that came into existence many years ago, with Apple airports, and they will be brought under the umbrella of the Blue Socket, to secure them
Networks and Communications has been contacting individuals who have had wireless connections for a long time to get them under the security umbrella
The new box is currently supporting the HP wireless cart for Letha Jeanpierre's area in the ATC at De Anza and will also support John Swensson's wireless lab and other labs that want to come into being in the ATC
No plans to purchase any other boxes
Funding for wireless capability comes from the individual departments

· There is a lot of demand in the library for wireless

The student body has contacted Sharon Luciw and she told them that the current ETS projects needed to be completed before going any further and that they would have to provide the funding for the hardware and ongoing support

· There are a limited number of wireless classrooms, which are very isolated and restricted to only the computers in those classrooms

In the KCI there are some public access areas with restrictions on what can be accessed as well as the bandwidth that can be used

· After a security plan and policy have been put together, as well as getting input from the user community, ETS will have a better idea of how to provide or restrict wireless network access

Going forward with the portal and new LDAP directory, will be moving toward users identifying themselves with a user name and password to access certain network resources

Stage 1 - Currently have to restrict by location because the portal and LDAP directory log in are not set up
Stage 2 - In the future, when the log in authentication and identification is in place, an individual will have the privileges to do what they need to do

Not sure how guests will be dealt with at this time, but will probably have very limited privileges (only to the outside internet)

· Dan Mitchell stated that he wants to make wireless accessible and not restricted

· The things that are holding the District back from moving forward with wireless, is resources: time, money, and staff

There was a request to see a timeline based upon resources
Actively looking into other means of funding the resources (equipment and design work, not human resources), such as:

Smart Valley II - a non-profit organization designed to support technology in various non-profit and governmental agencies

Talking to them about establishing Foothill as the first of several community colleges that would be pervasively wireless
Have been speaking to them for the past 6 or 7 month and is a work in progress

Also speaking to some vendors

· The initial cost for one building with about 12 access points is about $10K - $11K with a per year vendor maintenance charge, for hardware and software support, of over $1K. The hardware and software charge does not include any labor support from ETS
· The range for the wireless connections will be tested soon

3. SUBCOMMITTEE REPORT - HARDWARE/SOFTWARE STANDARDS COMMITTEE

· The committee met yesterday, Tuesday, March 2^nd

There are no changes to the current standards

The committee does consider "tweaking" the standards every time they meet
A report was given on what some of the issues are related to migrating to XP from 2000 and some of the benefits and well as the down sides
The G5 is not on the standards list because the category for special configurations has been deleted

Discussed the need to create multi classroom standards

There was a general agreement that we did need to accept certain minimum standards, in light of Measure E renovations

4. DISCUSSION ON SPAM FILTERING - TOM ROZA, ETS SUPERVISOR OF SYSTEMS AND OPERTIONS, WILL ATTEND TO RESPOND TO QUESTIONS ABOUT PROPOSAL TO CREATE USER ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON SPAM CONTROL

· The latest virus attack - we got hit yesterday by the Beagle virus

It is a mass-mailing worm
Shows up as an attachment to an e-mail that appears to be coming from an administrator
Got through the SPAM/firewall because the attachment was password protected
As of this morning no new viruses have come through
It didn't get through the spam/firewall as a flaw of Barracuda
When there is a virus attack, an e-mail message is sent out, from Sharon or Gerry, to the entire District

· There was an article in the New York Times Magazine, "The Virus Underground," that explains the culture and lifestyle of individuals who write viruses

A hard copy of the article will be sent to all committee members

· The February 27^th issue of the San Jose Mercury News carried an article about SPAM, entitled "Optimism Grows in the Fight Against Growing SPAM"

Tom Roza will be glad to make a hard coy of the article available to anyone on the committee who requests it

· There was wide consensus in the BSS Division on the Foothill campus, that they would not like anything blocked, at the individual level, other than viruses

They do not want e-mails bounced and want to be made aware if something had been bounced, as well as, at the individual level be able to make the decision if something was, or was not spam
Several members wanted to make the decision whether or not to set up a filter in Eudora

· Dan Mitchell feels that there are implementation questions that the advisory committee needs to look at, as well as a principle question that technical decisions are based upon

As a matter of principle it should not be okay to block messages without notification - Dan proposed that this become a policy or principle of where to start from when talking about the implementation

Could be referring to {BULK} in the subject header, or rejecting a virus bearing messages and informing the sender

Can talk about the standards by which messages are marked as {BULK}, or train people on how to deal with spam on the individual level
Some messages will get through even with blocking, not all bad messages can be blocked

Wants to start with the principle that possible "legitimate" e-mail messages are not deleted without notification
The second level of control is with the user in their client software - can set up or turn on filters that can be customized
Finally, some messages are still going to get through and the user will need to delete them by hand

· This would be a district committee to advise ETS
· Barracuda has the ability to quarantine messages, which ETS is not currently doing

E-mails that have been placed in quarantine can be:

Delivered: Send the e-mail to the person(s) it was intended for
Deleted: Delete the e-mail from quarantine and do not deliver
White List: Tell the SPAM firewall to deliver the e-mail and all future ones that are identical to it

· As of yet, have not implemented a global quarantine

Tom has told his administrators to either: tag, deliver, mark or bounce

· The current appliance does not have the capability to discern between different departments

It can scan e-mail messages and score for various patterns and content
A message is a message to the firewall and makes decisions on delivery or non delivery based on content and patterns the firewall industry has come up with
The firewall is currently at the outer boundary of our network

· Quarantines are designed for all suspected attachments or certain types of e-mails that you donÕt want to get through, but you want to put in a certain place so a trained eye can make a decision on its content
· Tagging is a form of quarantine and goes into a different folder
· The last NewsBytes listed two e-mail addresses that have been set up to help in identifying spam or non-spam

If you get an e-mail that is spam forward it onto: thisISspam@fhda.edu
If you got a message with the subject line containing "[BULK]" and you don't consider it spam, forward that message to: <a href="mailto:thisisNOTspam@fhda.edu">thisisNOTspam@fhda.edu
Currently Tom is taking action on responses to: this is Spam or this is not Spam

Willie directed Tom to collect the responses and wait until the committee has been formed to give ETS some direction

· There are some "Good Samaritan" organizations on the Internet who are acting, in what they think is the best interest of everyone, and they create real time "Black Lists"

Our firewall has the capability to use those "Black Lists" in filtering of e-mail
We are currently using two such lists from the Internet to help us in identifying spam

· Messages stay quarantined until viewed or purged
· There is the potential of one person saying something is spam and another person saying it is not spam
· There was a consensus to create a subcommittee on defining spam

Suggestions were made that the committee consist of the following 10 members:
1 faculty member from each campus
DA Classified - (Kevin Metcalf was volunteered by his supervisor)
FH Classified - (Eric Rosenthal volunteered)
HR Classified
An On Line Instructor
1 member from the FH BSS Division
FA - Scott Heffner
Co-Chair
Chair - Tom Roza

5. PUBLIC DOMAIN BOARD POLICY DISCUSSION

· The Joint Development Group (JDG) will be handling this proposed board policy

This has been deemed to be more of a faculty issue and less of a technology issue
The decision to have the JDG handle this policy came from the Chancellors Advisory Council
ETAC no longer is charged to take the lead on this policy initiative although members are encouraged to participate as they wish

6. STRATEGIC PLANNING PROCESS - (1) REVIEW DRAFT VISION STATEMENT, (2) BREAK UP INTO GROUPS AND FOCUS ON OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

· There was a very brief discussion on how to reorganize the four possible vision statements that had been handed out at the February 4th meeting

Will try to review in more detail at the next ETAC meeting
Any further suggestions can be sent to: eberhardtpam@fhda.edu

7. OTHER ITEMS FROM THE COMMITTEE

· Wayne Chenoweth will be a guest speaker at the next ETAC meeting to review the Section 508 policy
· Scott Heffner suggested that those staff members that know how to use equipment available to them, such as Elmo, volunteer to teach others how to use it

Adjourned: 1:51 pm

Next Meeting: Wednesday, March 17, 12:30 - 2:00 pm, Foothill Carriage House Conference Room

Last Updated: Monday, March 22, 2004 at 11:59:31 AM
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