Information Technology Services

We have received reports recently of another identified phishing attempt. Continue to keep up this great level of awareness!

A recent phishing attempt was brought to the attention of LITS by several in the community. The message used more sophisticated language than a typical phishing email. The fact that the message did not come from allegheny.edu is what helped to identify the phishing attempt.

This was a good reminder to the Allegheny community to be cautious when receiving unexpected emails.

If you get a message you think is phishing/spam you should:  

1. Not click on links in the message
2. Follow up by other means.  
3. Report it as spam/phishing in Gmail

Please do not hesitate to contact the InfoDesk at infodesk@allegheny.edu or by phone to report phishing attempts or obtain more information.

LITS always encourages safe account practices and would encourage you to visit the LITS website to change your password if you ever feel that your account credentials have been compromised.  In addition, two-factor authentication is an added layer of protection against this possibility.

Count Day is complete.  LITS has made Colleague accessible as normal to staff today, 1/30/2019.

Sakai now uses Google’s authentication to log you into the system. If you are logged into your Allegheny G Suite account, clicking the “Allegheny login” link in Sakai will automatically log you into your Sakai account.  If you are logged into a personal Gmail account, you will need to log out of that account before logging into Sakai.

Initially, you may need to clear your browser’s cache and history, and relaunch the browser, to make the new login method take effect.

Sakai will be unavailable campus-wide Thursday,  January 10th,  from 9am to 10am, in order to perform system changes.  Thank you for your patience.

Sakai is scheduled to be updated on Monday, January 7th and will be unavailable during the morning. All Sakai services should be restored by noon.

A recent phishing attempt on campus from the Provost requesting gift cards is a good reminder to the campus community to be skeptical of any email that comes in appearing to be from someone requesting money or valuables transferred to them.  If in doubt, it is wise to use an alternate means of communication to confirm, either a phone call or other response you initiate on your own.

Receipt of today’s email does not indicate that your account or password has been compromised in anyway.  LITS always encourages safe account practices and would encourage you to visit the LITS website to change your password, if you ever feel that your account credentials have been compromised.  In addition, two-factor authentication is an added layer of protection against this possibility.

Phishing can be reported to Google by clicking the triple dot options button on the email, and choosing “Report Phishing”.  Deleting the email is also appropriate.  If you responded to the email, report any further communication related to your response as phishing and do not respond further.

As part of ongoing network improvements, LITS plans to test a failover to our backup internet connection at 6pm Monday October 8th.  We do not anticipate an outage as a result of this test, but if one does occur, it will result in a complete loss of internet access campuswide, possibly intermittently or repeatedly until 7pm.

Once the test is complete, we will restore to our previous configuration.

What’s your contingency plan when you can’t make it to class? What will your students do while your mid-semester conference whisks you away? Or when the campus flu strikes you down? Having a pre-planned answer to the “what if” can see you through disasters or blips in your day.

Bring your Plan B ideas and share them in a discussion led by Catharina Coenen, Professor of Biology and Director of Faculty Development.

When: Friday, September 21
Lunch will be served beginning at noon, and the discussion will begin at 12:20
Where: Pelletier Collaboratory
Please register here.