Maynooth University IT Services

Dear colleague,

We are aware of on-going phishing attacks targeting MU staff and students. These emails can be from compromised staff or student accounts, as is the case this afternoon.

Please note that IT Services will never email requesting passwords or account details.

Please delete any phishing emails you receive. You can also report them to Microsoft so they can update their filters using the following instructions: https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/it-services/phishing.

If you are suspicious about an email, contact the sender directly (not by email) to verify its authenticity before clicking on any links.

Kindest Regards,

IT Services.

We are aware of issues with the phone service this morning.
 
Our supplier is working on site to restore the service. 
 
We will advise once the service is restored
 
Kind regards,
 
ServiceDesk
IT Services

Email Communication sent to Staff on 02-05-2019

Dear colleagues,
 
The network issue that impacted various services re-occurred in the last 30 minutes.
We have definitely identified the source of the issue and implemented a workaround.
 
The service is stable and the workaround will remain in place until we can fix the original problem.
 
 
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
 
Regards,
IT Services
 

Notice sent to All Staff 02/05/2019

Colleagues,
 
We are currently experiencing a network issue with all services effected. We will provide an update as soon as possible.
 
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
 
Regards,
IT Services.
 

On Friday evening (05/04) a phishing email was sent to the all-students mailing list. This email was fraudulent and the contents un-true. This email should be ignored. We have used Microsoft’s Office 365 Security features to retract this email.
 
This email was sent to all-students@list.nuim.ie, not to any individual students. The attackers did not have access to the actual addresses behind that mailing list.
 
Steps have been taken to prevent similar abuses of this mailing list.

Dear Students,

Recently there was a phishing campaign directed at students. Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from, for example, the University, in order to convince users to reveal personal information, such as passwords, usernames and even credit card numbers.

Typically, these emails will claim to be from IT Services, another office within the organisation, a reputable business that you may have dealt with or even a friend or colleague.  Phishing messages will use terms such as "confirm", "validate", "follow the link" or "update" - note that MU IT Services will never ask staff or students to do any of these things.  If you receive a mail requesting any information in relation to your account, or to click on a link to log into an unfamiliar page,  report the page and let us know immediately.

If in any doubt, please contact the IT ServiceDesk -  ServiceDesk@mu.ie, phone 01 708 3388, or change your password via the Maynooth University website.

As you have completed your studies some time ago, your account is now scheduled for deletion. This affects the following IT services which have been available to you:

Your user account
MU e-mail address including your Office 365 email and calendar
Personal network share (sometimes referred to as your 'x-drive') and Office 365 storage
Please be advised that these will be deleted on Wednesday, 17th April, 2019, which will result in the following:

• You will no longer be able to access your MU account to log onto PCs, email or the Maynooth University network
• All emails (and email forwards associated with your account) will be deleted
• All data from your personal network share and Office 365 storage will be deleted
• Moodle and library access will be revoked

You should take the following actions: 

• Forward any emails that you wish to retain, to another account or save them as files
• Save any files that you wish to retain from your personal network share to a secure file store or device, meaning any assignments, theses or related data should be downloaded from your account/Moodle

In the event that you are receiving this email in error and you are currently a registered student with Maynooth University, please contact servicedesk@mu.ie providing information of your relationship with the University.

Don’t miss out…
As a graduate of Maynooth, do consider registering with the Maynooth Alumni Online Community on http://alumni-network.maynoothuniversity.ie so you can keep your contact details up to date and we can keep you posted about alumni benefits and services and any alumni events (at home and abroad) that will be on during the year including the alumni Carol Service reception, ourSummer Soirée (cultural evening event just for alumni), the annual Maynooth Alumni Reunion (3rd Saturday in September) and lectures specifically geared for alumni http://maynoothuniversity.ie/alumnilectureseries . Check us out also on social media – see https://maynoothuniversity.ie/alumnicommunity - there are many ways to connect with and be a part of the Maynooth Alumni network – so keep connected!

Dear Colleagues,

As part of continual service improvement, and in line with the University's commitment to enhancing IT security, there will be changes to your Maynooth University logon account. These changes will be rolled out as part of the “O365 Security Enhancements Project”.

The first phase of these changes involves implementing a new password policy. This policy will apply to all accounts and will enforce a longer minimum password length.

The second phase is a security enhancement using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).

In the coming months Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) will be enabled on all staff accounts. This will enhance the security of University data and will be applied to each account in a phased roll out.

There will be further communication and support from IT Services as these security enhancements are applied to users’ accounts.

Brian Carolan
Director - IT Services
Maynooth University, IT Services
Email: servicedesk@mu.ie

Dear Colleagues, 

Following up from our email of 18/10/2018, we would like to provide a short update regarding the “Class Hall PC OS upgrade” project. 

To-date, over 70% of the PCs were upgraded to Windows 10. If you have not yet used one of these Windows 10 machines, you will do so in the coming weeks and months. Whilst using these Windows 10 Class Hall PCs, please keep the following important information in mind: 

To use any class hall PC, you must have valid Maynooth University login credentials. To log on: 

To ensure the continued security and integrity of your data you must also sign out of Windows 10. To sign out:

To get the latest information regarding this project, please visit IT Services web page "Class Hall PC OS upgrade” under the “Public Access Computer Rooms” page.

Regards,

ServiceDesk

IT Services

Dear Colleague, 

The current Windows 7 setup on PCs in the class halls is out-of-date and no longer meets Maynooth University’s IT Security and PC Management standards. Therefore, in the coming weeks, IT Services in co-operation with AV Support will upgrade all class hall computers to Windows 10. This upgrade will increase the security and improve the overall IT environment within the class halls.  

The “Class Hall PC OS Upgrade” Project will commence on Tuesday, 30/10/2018 and we aim to conclude no later than Friday, 07/12/2018. You will start to notice changes in the class halls already on Monday, 05/11/2018 with Hume class halls being the first to be upgraded, followed closely by Iontas, Arts Building and so on.  

This upgrade in operating system will change the way you currently use the PCs in the class halls, therefore we recommend that you review the information “PACR - Class Hall PC OS Upgrade” provided on the IT Services web page under “Public Access Computer Rooms”, in order to familiarize yourself with the various changes and also to view the progress of this project. In summary:

• you will now be required to logon with your MU credentials each time you wish to use a class hall PC, therefore,
• you must have a valid MU username and password to ensure the continued security and integrity of your data, you must also remember to sign out 
• on login, your X drive will be automatically mapped 

If you require any further information pertaining to the above, please contact IT Services on 3830 or send an email to Servicedesk@mu.ie. 

Regards, 

IT Services 
ServiceDesk 

Dear User,
We have been notified by Human Resources that your term of employment with Maynooth University has ended. This affects the following IT services which have been available to you:

  Your user account
  MU e-mail address including your Office 365 email and calendar
  Personal network share (sometimes referred to as your 'x-drive') and Office 365 storage

Please be advised that these will be deleted on 22nd of January, 2019, which will result in the following:
 You will no longer be able to access your MU account to log onto PCs, email or the Maynooth University network
 All emails (and email forwards associated with your account) will be deleted
 All data from your personal network share and Office 365 storage will be deleted
 Moodle, Workbench and HR Portal (ePayslips) access will be revoked

You should take the following actions:
 Print any ePayslips / P60s, which you require for your own records, from the HR Portal (hrportal.nuim.ie)
 Forward any emails that you wish to retain, to another account or save them as files
 Save any files that you wish to retain from your personal network share to a secure file store or device
 Data belonging to your former Department may be crucial to their correct functioning. Make sure that you have transferred such data off your personal storage and into their possession in a secure fashion.
 Your MyCard (staff ID card) should be returned to the Post Room, located on the North Campus, and any outstanding balance on it used before its return.

In the unlikely event that you are receiving this email in error and you are currently employed by Maynooth University, please contact humanresources@mu.ie or phone 01 708 3866.

If you experience any difficulties in completing any of the advised actions above, please contact servicedesk@mu.ie well in advance of the account closure deadline to ensure that the best possible support can be provided.
Further details and a copy of this email are available on the Maynooth University IT Services website, at :

https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/it-services/it-services-notices

under the heading, "Staff Leaving - Your Maynooth University staff account will soon be deleted."

Regards,
IT Servicedesk.

Notice of planned changes to wifi networks on campus.

      As of Monday 27th August the guest SSID (wifi network) named "Maynooth University" will be changed to "MU-Guest".
This is being done in an effort to clearly describe this network as a guest SSID and to distinguish it from the preferred staff & student SSID "eduroam".
The MU-Guest SSID will continue to function as an unencrypted network offering port 80 and port 443 (http:// & https://) access.

     There will also be a change to the eduroam network - replacing the current realm identifier "@nuim.ie" with the new realm "@mu.ie".
This change will not affect on-campus users - the local eduroam network will respond to both realms - but roaming users will need to download and install the updated Configuration Assistance Tool to rewrite their connection settings.
It is hoped this change will be completed before week ending 31st August, an update email will be sent to confirm this date.

Kind Regards,

ServiceDesk
IT Services.
 

Notice sent to All Staff 19/07/2018

Colleagues,
 
The issue with outgoing calls to landlines and international numbers has been resolved for the moment.                    
 
 
 
Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section. 

Regards,

IT Services,
ServiceDesk.
 

Colleagues,

                   we have been made aware there are issues with outgoing calls to landlines and international numbers.

Internal telephony is working as expected and calls to mobile numbers seem to be unaffected.

A call has been logged with our service providers, and IT Services will update as more information is available.

Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section.

Regards,

IT Services,
ServiceDesk.
 

Colleagues,
                   Scheduled work in Lyreen Data Center has been completed and services are no longer considered at risk.
 
Access to ITS back office has been fully restored, access to ienabler/student web is currently offline but is expected to be restored shortly.

Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section.

Regards,

IT Services,
ServiceDesk.
 

Colleagues,

In order to repair an electrical (UPS) fault in the Lyreen Data Center, the ITS Production System will be unavailable from 07:30 - 14:00 on Wednesday 18th July. Registry + Fees & Grants have previously been consulted about the timing of this planned outage.

Other services should be considered “at risk” until this electrical fault is rectified.

A further notice will be issued when the work is complete.

Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section.

Regards,
IT Services,
ServiceDesk.
 

Dear Colleague

We are writing in the context of upcoming Office365 Information Seminars which you have registered for

IT Services would appreciate it if you could complete the attached survey on your awareness of different features in Office365 before you attend your scheduled workshop.

The survey is designed to measure the effectiveness of the information seminars as a means of promoting user awareness of Office365 features. It will be repeated four weeks after the seminars are completed so that IT Services can assess how users perceive the effectiveness of this mode of information delivery.

The survey is conducted through Microsoft Forms. Participants will be required to log into Office365 to complete it, but the survey is anonymous.

IT Services greatly appreciates your co-operation in this matter.

With kind regards,

IT Services Office365 Training Team

Dear Colleague,

You may have received an email over the last few days purporting to be from Eberhard Albrecht with the subject line -

Subject: Protecting Faculty and Staff Account / Quarantine Exercise - Request Number.......

This is a phishing attempt and you should disregard or delete the email.

Please note that we will never ask you to disclose your password in an email.

Regards,

IT Services
ServiceDesk

Dear Colleague,

We are aware that staff can not log in to the HR Portal this morning -

mu.ie/hrportal

We are working with the vendor to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section. 

Regards,
IT Services
ServiceDesk

 Dear Colleague,

Network Service 

Due to a loss of power for the North Campus during Friday evening there was an impact to network services on campus in Rye Block D (Campus Planning & Development, Kennedy Institute, Design & Innovation), this has now been resolved.  Wireless service in Hume has  been restored. While wireless service is reduced in areas of Arts, Science, Callan, Village Apartments and APT Lecture Hall, there is no significant service impact and will be fully restored early this week.
 
Access to Office 365, Moodle, Peach Department File Shares and other Data Centre services was not affected. 

Access to Moodle

There was a separate logon issue for Moodle users earlier today unrelated to the above. This has now been resolved.

Regards,

IT Services

Servicedesk

Dear Colleague,
 
Due to a loss of power for the North Campus during Friday evening there has been an impact to network services on campus. There is reduced network service in Rye Block D (Campus Planning & Development, Kennedy Institute). There is some impact to wireless service in Arts, Science, Callan, Hume, Village Apartments and APT Lecture Hall.

 Service to these affected areas will be restored as soon as possible.

Access to Office 365, Moodle, Peach Department File Shares and other Data Centre services was not affected. 
 
Regards,

IT Services

Servicedesk

 
Dear Colleague,

An ESB outage yesterday evening affected the south campus, this lead to issues with incoming calls to the University.  The problem is now sorted and all phone systems are working, if you are experiencing any issues please advise our Servicedesk.

 https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/it-services/servicedesk

Regards 

IT Services
Servicedesk

Dear Colleagues,

We are aware of Microsoft Outlook issues that affected some users this morning. Please be advised that this issue has been resolved. Reminder, that Office365 Outlook, OneDrive and SharePoint are available through https://portal.office.com

Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section. 

IT Services 

ServiceDesk 

Dear Colleagues,
We are aware of Microsoft Outlook issues affecting some users this morning.
We are working to resolve this and will provide an update as soon as it is available.
In the meantime, all users affected should use 
https://portal.office.com
 
 
IT Services 
ServiceDesk 
 

Remedial actions have been taken and the filestore service restarted overnight.

This appears to have fixed departmental filestore access.

Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section.
 
Regards,
ServiceDesk
IT Services.
 

Currently departmental  filestore is experiencing an intermittent error which is causing disruption/slowness in connecting to departmental shares.
We are working to resolve this and will update further in the morning after remedial action has been taken overnight.
 
 Your X: drive and Sharepoint/Office 365 are unaffected.

Please note that a copy of this email and all legitimate IT Services Notifications will appear on the IT Services page of the Maynooth University website under the IT Services Notices section.
 
Regards,
ServiceDesk
IT Services.
 

Notice sent to All Staff 27/03/2018

Due to on-going issues with the Peach FileShares, planned changes to facilitate moving x-drive files to another server has been moved forward. 
On Thursday 5th of April, your X-drive will be unavailable from 6pm to 8pm.
 
Please ensure that before 6pm on Thursday that all your files are saved and closed. Files still open during this time are at risk and data will be lost.
Even though computers can be used during this time, our recommendation is that you log out of your computer. 
 
After the file transfer has finished, just logon and your data will be available on your X drive as normal. If you have remained logged onto the computer during the outage, please ensure that at 8pm you reboot the computer. 
 
If, however, you are manually mapping the X-drive on Macintosh or Linux computers you will have to map this service with its new path. 
Your new X-drive can be explicitly mapped using the following paths: 
 
Windows 
\\staffdata.ad.mucampus.ie\staff$\USERNAME
 
Macintosh 
smb://staffdata.ad.mucampus.ie/staff$/USERNAME
 
Replace USERNAME with your login username. 
 
Improvements to Service:

• X Drive quota increased to 2GB
• User Data Self Restore  

 
IT Services 
Servicedesk 
 
 

Notice sent to All Students 09/03/2018

We apologise for the short notice, however due to on-going issues, planned changes to facilitate moving x-drive files to another server has been moved forward.  Today, Friday 09/03/2018 your X-drive will be unavailable from 3 pm to 5 pm.  If you are logging onto MUCAMPUS domain in the Public Access Computing Rooms, your X-drive and files will be available on next logon after 5 pm.  

Please ensure that before 3 pm today all your files are saved and closed. Files still open during this time are at risk and data will be lost. Even though computers can be used during this time we recommend that you logout. 

After the file transfer has finished just logon and your data will be available on the X drive. If you used the computer during the outage, please ensure that at 5 pm you reboot the computer. 

If, however, you are manually mapping the X-drive on Macintosh or Linux computers you will have to map this service with its new path. 
Your new X-drive can be explicitly mapped using the following paths: 

Windows 
\\studentdata\student$\STUDENTNUMBER 

Macintosh 
smb://studentdata.ad.mucampus.ie/student$/STUDENTNUMBER 
Replace STUDENTNUMBER with your student number. 

• Improvements to service
• Increased quota to 500MB 
• User data self restore 

IT Services 
Servicedesk 
 

Notice sent to All Staff 21/02/2018

Currently both the Staff (peach) and Student (birch) filestores are experiencing an intermittent error which causes a loss of connectivity from client machines to the shared folders/drives.
We have implemented a workaround on the filestores to restore connectivity within 1 minute of this disconnection, however individual client machines can be slow to reconnect and may exhibit slow or poor response times for 1-2 minutes after the initial loss of connectivity.
 
We are currently investigating a permanent resolution to this problem, but ask for patience if you do encounter an issue connecting to your shared drives, your machine will reconnect automatically within a matter of minutes.
 
Thanks
 
IT Services

Notice sent to All Staff 02/02/2018

On Wednesday 31/01/2018 we had a ransomware incident on campus. The incident was promptly reported and dealt with successfully within a short period of time.
Ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer or its data until a sum of money is paid to release it.
Timing is vital. If you suspect that a computer has been infected by ransomware,  e.g. you come across files that suddenly you have no permission to open or have an unfamiliar file extension, for example *.gdcb or *.crypt or a windows pop up demanding payment, please switch off your computer immediately and contact ServiceDesk on 3388.
Further information on how to  protect your computer against ransomware and any other computer viruses can be found on our webpages.
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/it-services/it-services-notices
Kind regards,
IT Services ServiceDesk

What is ransomware?

Ransomware is a type of malicious software designed to block access to a computer or its data until a sum of money is paid to release it.

How does the GandCrab ransomware work?

Ransomware called GandCrab  spreads / distributes through spam email attachments. Users may be prompted to download and run a file called “Chrome_Font.exe”. This app will start to encrypt specific files (Word, Excel, etc.).

Without the key, encrypted files can no longer be accessed or retrieved.

What should you do if you are affected by ransomware?

Timing is vital. If you come across encrypted files (unfamiliar file extensions, for example,  .gdcb or .crypt) and a demand for payment,  please switch off your computer immediately and contact ServiceDesk on 3388.

Can I protect my computer against ransomware and any other computer viruses?

Ensure that you have a good anti-virus software installed and ensure that it is updated
Backup your data and ensure that it is safely stored
Do not open attachments if you do not know who sent them
Do not run applications if you are not aware from where they came 
Ensure that the MS-Windows is patched
Ensure that installed applications are updated and patched
Ensure that you have a good, secure password and don’t use this password multiple times