Category Archives: Top Stories

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Profiles in IT: A special Veterans Day edition

By | October 31, 2018
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Dog tags with block M, US flag in bg

Military training prepares veterans for a career in IT by requiring technical proficiency, while teaching about teamwork, tenacity, leadership, and more. Veterans’ diverse backgrounds and knowledge demonstrate attention to detail, perseverance, and vibrancy focused on creating brighter futures at the University of Michigan. This Veterans Day, November 11, 2018, we are especially thankful for their service, and are appreciative… Read More »

U-M Information Security policy: Revised and approved

By | October 30, 2018
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The words security repeated over a blue sphere

The revised University of Michigan Information Security policy (SPG 601.27) recently was approved, along with a number of new information technology standards. The policy and accompanying standards represent the most comprehensive revision of the institution’s information security program since its inception over a decade ago. SPG 601.27 and the standards are based on a cybersecurity risk management framework that… Read More »

Volunteers needed! An Hour of Code can inspire possibilities

By | October 26, 2018
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Hour of Code

Part of the mission of the U-M Women in IT Community of Practice is to help build the pipeline of women IT professionals. As such, the CoP is calling for volunteers from the U-M community to support the Hour of Code at Ann Arbor Public Schools December 3-7 to help introduce all students to computer science. Anyone can… Read More »

Everyone has a role in accessibility. Here are some quick tips.

By | October 22, 2018
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image with tag attached that says "alt"

  Accessibility efforts are only successful at large institutions and organizations if the efforts being made are scalable; what this means in context is each individual must take ownership in their portion of responsibility to accomplish these goals. In an effort to educate about high-incidence accessibility issues and spread awareness of accessibility efforts, ITS has come up with Accessibility… Read More »

IT leaders gather for day of learning, networking at U-M

By | October 16, 2018
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IT leaders from U-M and peer academic research universities from the Midwest spent a day of learning and networking at the Michigan League. The Office of the Vice President for IT and Chief Information Officer partnered with Gartner, Inc. to host the Great Lakes IT Leadership Forum on Thursday, September 20, 2018. Ravi Pendse, vice president for IT… Read More »

Discovering new efficiencies and savings through data center consolidation

By | October 15, 2018
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A woman standing in a data center amid rows of server racks

Vaccinations, early detection, and new cures have led to incredible medical breakthroughs over the past several decades. Today, advancements in precision health, wearable technology, genetic sequencing, and big data analytics promise to reshape modern medicine even further. A critical, yet often overlooked factor in the advancement of healthcare is the underlying health IT infrastructure. As Michigan Medicine faces… Read More »

Participate in National Cybersecurity Awareness Month this October!

By | September 27, 2018
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October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Photo of hand holding cell phone.

Every October, Information Assurance (IA) leads a celebration of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) by hosting events, sharing tips, and reminding everyone of our shared responsibility to protect and secure university and personal systems and the sensitive information they contain. NCSAM is spearheaded by the National Cyber Security Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This year,… Read More »

It’s a wrap! Campus WiFi Upgrade and WiFi on the Diag are complete

By | September 21, 2018
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On Friday, September 7, 2018, ITS held a ribbon cutting ceremony on the steps of Hatcher Graduate Library, in the iconic central Diag, to mark the completion of two projects: the Campus WiFi Upgrade Project and WiFi on the Diag. The event began with remarks from Vice President of Information Technology and CIO, Ravi Pendse. Pendse reviewed the… Read More »

U-M hosts hackathon to lead development of next gen learning analytics platform

By | September 14, 2018
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On August 2-3, U-M hosted eight of our peer institutions from the Unizin consortium, as well as developers from Google, to participate in a hackathon using the newly developed Unizin Data Platform (UDP). The UDP is a cloud-based, learning analytics infrastructure that commonly models behavioral, performance, and demographic dimensions of teaching and learning data. Participants used a representational… Read More »

Virtual visits provide patients with care from the comfort of their homes

By | September 13, 2018
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young white/asian woman sitting on bed with open laptop

This wasn’t how Terri wanted to spend her weekend. It was Friday night when she first started noticing signs of a urinary tract infection. She had a busy schedule, and now this recurring condition was threatening to derail her plans. Hoping for quick relief, Terri signed into MyUofMHealth.org and initiated an eVisit by answering a series of questions… Read More »

Beyond the classroom: ISS has deep roots in the Ann Arbor community

By | August 21, 2018
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LSA Instructional Support Services has a professional staff of 53 full-time employees that strives to provide exceptional and professional support for the integration of new technologies, methods, and content into courses across LSA. ISS is also responsible for the audio/visual, computing, and technology needs of all of LSA’s classrooms, auditoriums, and event spaces, as well as most of… Read More »

MiVideo supports collaborative research at U-M

By | August 6, 2018
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Have you ever wondered how to efficiently manage and and share a collection of more than 15,000 research videos? “With MiVideo, of course!” says Melinda Kraft, ITS Teaching and Learning service manager. MiVideo is the university’s streaming media service, powered by Kaltura, and is approved for use with certain types of sensitive data. “It’s a great option for… Read More »

Role & access management: A smarter way to grant access

By | July 31, 2018
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An illustration depicts a digital access management system

The Role and Access Management Project selected and began to create a tool to improve how access is granted and revoked at U-M. The tool is designed to accelerate start-up time for new employees, improve data security, replace some manual processes, increase the ability to track and report on access, and simply make it easier for authorized individuals to access the right U-M resources when they need them.

HITS uses data to improve customer service and communication

By | July 24, 2018
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HITS Desktop Support Agents

Each year, HITS receives more than 265,000 service tickets from the Michigan Medicine community requesting help with password resets, new device orders, video conferencing, software installations, and much more. Until recently, tickets were collected in two systems, making it difficult for HITS to obtain a holistic view of the types of requests coming in and to use that… Read More »

Shared threat intelligence saves the day

By | July 10, 2018
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A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack took down a residence hall network switch at the University of Maryland (UMD) over spring break 2018, but it could have been a lot worse without the collaborative threat information sharing partnership of U-M and other universities. 90% of attack traffic blocked “If we hadn’t been using our shared threat intelligence,… Read More »

Arbor Lakes: A longstanding hub of tech innovation

By | July 6, 2018
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Long before Arbor Lakes became the residence of U-M Information and Technology Services and Health Information Technology and Services, it was owned by Manufacturing Data Systems, Inc. (MDSI), a pioneer of computer-aided manufacturing. On Friday, June 15, 2018, MDSI returned to Arbor Lakes for their 50-year reunion. For co-founders Charles (Chuck) Hutchins (U-M class of ’57), Ken Stephanz,… Read More »