ITS is teaming up with the UI Department of Public Safety to enable a new emergency notification system on the University’s main campus and the Oakdale campus.
Dubbed “Hawk Alert,” the system uses the Connect-ED service developed especially for schools, including colleges and universities. It allows delivery of a message to tens of thousands of cell phone numbers, home phone numbers, work phone numbers or e-mail accounts within seconds. The system is intended for emergency notification only, delivering messages about severe weather, violence, hazardous material incidents or other situations that pose a threat to students, faculty, and staff.
“In an emergency, it’s critical that we be able to reach all members of the University community in as short an amount of time as possible,” says Mark Katsouros, Director of TNS. “Hawk Alert will allow us to do that in a manner that’s much faster and more efficient than our current mass mail system.”
The first phase of Hawk Alert was implemented Sept. 1. A second phase, set to launch by Nov. 1, will add text messaging capabilities.
The University also has installed a series of notification towers equipped with sirens and voice systems, which also will help ensure that those on campus hear alerts and warnings.
University administrators are urging all students, staff, and faculty to add or update their cell and other phone numbers in the campus directory as soon as possible. To do that, log in to Employee Self Service and click “Name and Address Change” under the Name and Addresses tab. Input the information into the field marked “Alternate Phone” in the Residing Address tab.
Cell phone numbers populated in the “Alternate Phone” field are intended for emergency use only, and it is not the University’s intent that they will be listed in any public directories.
The IT Security Office is offering a new tool for detecting security vulnerabilities in Web applications, including exploitation using Structured Query Language (SQL) injection techniques.
On 7-8 August, ICON will be down for a scheduled upgrade. 
The Customer Information Desk and Help Desk have recently completed working with Orientation Services and Admissions at 9 Freshmen Orientation Information Fairs in June and July. Over 9600 parents and students attended these fairs and were given information, pens, candy and had their questions answered by CID and Help Desk staff. One of this year’s most frequently answered questions was ‘Should we be buying a laptop or a desktop computer?’ followed closely by ‘What do you really think about Windows Vista, is it okay to use?’ Help Desk staff also had the opportunity to present a 30 minute session titled ‘Computing at Iowa’ followed by at least 15 minutes of questions 3 times at each of the 9 sessions (yes, they really did that presentation 27 times!) for about 2000 parents and students. One big change in the presentations was the opportunity to talk to both parents and students on the first day of orientation. Orientation Services received very positive feedback from the parents and students who attended this session that we will have this same opportunity next year as well. In addition to the two-day freshmen orientation sessions, the Help Desk has also staffed 8 transfer orientation sessions to answer questions for 1626 parents and students. Approximately 2,500 Technology Survival Guides were distributed at these orientation events.