March 2025 Update

Good morning,

I hope everyone is enjoying the spring weather and warmth. I have several IT updates to share with the campus community.

First, my apologies for the technology disruptions last week. Underground power cables that provide electricity to our Luter data center failed last Tuesday night. I would like to thank the Facilities team for their support in bypassing the fault, and quickly making a permanent repair last night. For the long term, we'll explore our options to make Luter more resilient from these types of failures.

I would also like to thank members of the Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) for sharing their concerns about the frequent single-sign-on (SSO) and multi-factor-authentication (MFA) prompts using Scholar. We've been reviewing logs, engaging with Microsoft, and have made configuration changes that will reduce the number of sign-ins for Scholar and other platforms.

We’re also promoting the use of small hardware security keys, such as YubiKeys, if you would like an alternative to using your smartphone for MFA. I know that MFA can be an inconvenience, but a password alone is not enough to keep you secure. With your feedback, we'll work towards ensuring just enough MFA with SSO. 

For many years, all campus network ports have been ”lit,” online and accessible. With the abundance of Wi-Fi, less than half of our network ports are in use.

Starting with our academic building network refresh this summer, we will deactivate unused Ethernet ports in the academic buildings. If you are using Ethernet port this spring, it will still be online after the upgrade. If an Ethernet port requires activation, we'll have a simple request process through https://help.cnu.edu.

Christopher Newport has received an exemption to Executive Order 46, allowing for research / on-premise use of the DeepSeek AI models, under certain conditions and requirements. If you would like to use DeepSeek, please submit a request and we'll work with you to meet the exemption's requirements.

As always, I appreciate all feedback. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. If you need immediate technical assistance, help is available via https://help.cnu.edu, (757) 594-7079, or helpdesk@cnu.edu.

Justin