Save the date for LEAP! event and SCA Program details

By Rob Renner | July 10, 2020

On behalf of the PATH Committee and our co-chairs Shoba Mallik and Keith Covert, I am pleased to announce the annual LEAP! (LITS Employee Appreciation Party) event, honoring and thanking employees through service and significant contribution awards, is happening! Please save the date of Thursday, September 24 from 1:30 to 3:00 pm for our re-imagined, virtual event!

Nominations are currently being sought for 2019/20 LITS Significant Contribution Awards (SCAs). The award program was put on hold due to COVID-19, but we are pleased to relaunch the program. For those of you who already submitted a nomination, they still count so you do not need to resubmit.

SCAs are our annual opportunity to recognize our most significant contributions toward LITS objectives and Emory’s mission. Therefore, please consider nominating a team member that you believe has made such a contribution. As a reminder, Significant Contribution Awards will focus on individuals. For team or group contributions, we will pursue separate recognition efforts that could include project or team awards, or celebration events upon project completion.  For more information on the SCA program and to view the LITS Rewards Program summary, please click here.

To submit a nomination for an individual who has made exceptional contributions, including those whose contributions were related to a team effort, please complete the LITS SCA Nomination Form by Friday, July 31. The form includes details about program criteria and the nomination process. Note that any LITS employee can nominate any other LITS employee for such an award. A committee comprised of LITS Directors and Associate Deans will review the nominations and make recommendations to LITS leadership regarding which nominations will result in awards.

Thank you for your consideration as we look forward to recognizing the great work that has been done throughout the division.

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New team created in Enterprise Security: Information Security Architecture

By Michael Davidson | July 10, 2020

As members of the LITS division can attest, technology is always changing and evolving. And, unfortunately, bad actors are doing the same: constantly advancing how, where, and when they attack systems and exploit vulnerabilities.

It is in large part due to these factors that Brad Sanford, LITS Chief Information Security Officer, has created a new team within Enterprise Security. Information Security Architecture is now the fourth team under Enterprise Security:

  • Threat, Vulnerability, and Incident Management – led by Derek Spransy
  • IT Risk and Compliance – led by Nataliya Bykova
  • Security Infrastructure – led by Andy Efting
    and now
  • Information Security Architecture – led by Mike (Mo) Davidson

In our current, budget-conscious state (thanks a lot, COVID-19), the new Information Security Architecture team was staffed with existing personnel within Enterprise Security and the larger LITS division.

Team members:

  • Zachery Cox moved to the new team from Derek’s Threat, Vulnerability, and Incident Management team
  • Chris Dehner moved to the new team from Nataliya’s IT Risk and Compliance team
  • Mike Chilcott moved to the new team from Nataliya’s IT Risk and Compliance team
  • Mike Davidson (also known as Mo) joined Enterprise Security to manage the new team, after having spent nearly 15 years in Enterprise Applications supporting Emory’s PeopleSoft applications. Danny Bridges is the new manager of the PeopleSoft Administration team.

Functions:

photo of team

The newly formed Information Security Architecture Team. As a mini “Pet of the Week,” see if you can find Mo’s dog, named Harley Davidson.

The Information Security Architecture team is the new home for Security Reviews and Cloud Security Architecture. The team is already deeply involved with the design and implementation of security controls for the Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS) offering that will be running Emory applications in our AWS landing zone. This is the service that was previously known as the Cloud Infrastructure Migration Project (CIMP). Also in the AWS space: AWS at Emory. The team will continue to collaborate with the LITS Architecture team (led by Steve Wheat) to ensure that appropriate security controls are included in our cloud solutions – as they continue to advance Emory’s capabilities for our researchers, and the RHEDcloud Foundation, by leveraging the flexible and scalable computing architecture at AWS.

Zach Cox will be the primary team member focused on cloud security technology. For security reviews, Mike Chilcott will continue his focus of performing security reviews for Emory Healthcare entities. And Chris Dehner will continue his focus of security reviews primarily supporting the University and the schools.

Nataliya Bykova’s team (which has been doing security reviews for several years) will continue to do IT Compliance Assessments against HIPAA security rules, PCI, GDPR, FISMA and GLBA.

Feel free to reach out to Mike (Mo) Davidson if you have any questions about the new team, its role, or any other aspects of this new organizational element.

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Spotlight on Metadata Services Team

By Jessie Copeland | July 10, 2020
Photo of new employee

Simon O’Riordan

The Metadata Services Team has been working on many different projects during this Spring.  Much of the team’s regular work can be done remotely. The team consists of Simon O’Riordan (Head of Metadata Services) and Andrew Battelini (Metadata Analyst).  During normal times, the team provides a wide range of non-MARC metadata services for the Emory Libraries and across campus. Specific examples of this are creating metadata standards and policies for the Digital Library Program, working with teaching faculty to ensure that their digital objects have appropriate metadata, general consultation of non-MARC metadata issues, and improving the quality of metadata in various digital repositories including the new Samvera repository.

As the work of the Metadata Services team is well-suited to remote work, Simon and Andrew have been able to continue with their regular tasks. This has included a major clean-up of rights metadata within the DAMS, creation of controlled headings for Types of Resources and Righsstatements.org fields within the DAMS, completion of the Alumni Publications Photographs collection within the DAMS, and creating metadata for the Civil War collection. The metadata for the Ron Sherman collection has been completed as well, and now the team is working on enhancing subject headings for collections.

photo of employee

Andrew Battelini

The Metadata Services team has also been instrumental in the development of the new digital repository. Simon worked on the metadata for the original collections slated for the first ingest. Now he and Andrew are working on the collections that have been identified for the second phase of ingest.

In addition to all of this, Simon and Andrew have taken advantage of the multitude of training and webinars available, including attending courses offered by professional organizations like Library Juice Academy.

The Metadata Services team has done a fantastic job pivoting to remote work during this time, learning new skills and supporting one another. Both Simon and Andrew deserve a big thank you.

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July wellness events

By Jay D Flanagan | July 10, 2020

The LITS Wellness Committee thought everyone might be interested in some additional classes that will be upcoming along with the end of the Operation Eat Right Challenge.

Upcoming Events

Operation Eat Right wraps up this Sunday, July 12.  Thank you for all of your efforts in getting the word out and participating in the challenge.

Ask the Registered Dietitian (RD) is back for the month of July. Join Dawn McMillian for this 30-minute group discussion that will focus on a different nutrition topic each week. Register HERE

TOPICS: 

  • July 8:  Four Keys to Healthy Eating When Ordering Out
  • July 15:  Balancing Food & Activity
  • July 29:  Tips on Meal Planning & Cooking Prep

Emory’s Diabetes Prevention Program will be launching its Fall classes in August with Informational classes scheduled to begin next week.  Please encourage your colleagues to take full advantage of this amazing opportunity to learn more about developing healthier habits related to eating, physical activity, and stress management, all while earning a $200 incentive.  You can see additional information here.

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Amy Li, Communications Coordinator, ECDS

By Wade Moricle | July 10, 2020
photo of employee

“Being able to write about ECDS projects on our own blog allowed me to showcase the really cool scholarship ECDS is doing.” – Amy Li

Amy Li recently joined the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) as their new communications coordinator postdoctoral fellow, having spent the past year as the Emory Libraries/ECDS Digital Humanities Fellow. She also finished the final year of her PhD, graduating this past May. Amy has also worked as: a social media coordinator for ECDS through their Digital Scholarship Internship Program (DSIP); a graduate student receptionist at the Rose Library; and as an undergraduate student assistant in Library Technical Services at Cornell University.

Originally from Ithaca, NY, Amy earned dual bachelor’s degrees in English and feminist, gender, & sexuality studies from Cornell University, with a minor in music (2014). Her PhD from Emory University is also in English (2020). Her dissertation topic was “A Future for Hopeful Monsters: Gender, Disability, Race, and Embodiment in Science Fiction,” which discusses representations of marginalized or oppressed bodies in science fiction literature and media.

When she’s not working, Amy likes to watch movies and has been trying to get back into playing piano and violin. She also loves cross-stitching and collecting different book editions of Frankenstein.

“It was really difficult to publish my own work as a graduate student,” says Amy. “Being able to write about ECDS projects on our own blog allowed me to showcase the really cool scholarship ECDS is doing. Working on weekly features for the center has been a terrific opportunity.”

You can reach Amy at amy [dot] s [dot] li [at] emory [dot] edu.

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LITS recent headlines and upcoming events

By Wade Moricle | July 10, 2020

Headlines & Events graphic banner

Recent LITS headlines:

Upcoming LITS events:

(go HERE for more information for each event)

  • July 16 – IT Briefing: 10:15 am – noon, Zoom Link
  • July 19 – Zoom Deadline to convert meetings: article link
  • July 21 – LEAF Virtual Coffee: 1:30 pm, Zoom Link, Zoom passcode: 787981
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Zoom will require passwords or waiting room starting July 19

By Jay D Flanagan | June 26, 2020

Many changes have occurred over the last three months with advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. One of these changes, which has actually been extremely useful to all of us, is our use of Zoom. Zoom has been huge for Emory, both on the University side helping to manage remote teaching and on the Healthcare side for use with telemedicine. And these are just a few of the ways Zoom has been used. We have seen an increase in the number of users from just over 8,000 in March of this year to over 23,000 now. Zoom itself has seen similar increases across all its customers. With the increases in the number of users and in usage comes heightened security concerns.

Due to this heightened need for online security, Zoom is making changes that will go into place on July 19, 2020 to increase security for both existing and new meetings.

Starting July 19, Zoom will require a passcode and/or waiting room to be enabled for ALL meetings. This change does not affect webinars.

How will existing meetings be affected?

  • Waiting rooms will be enabled by default for all meetings.
  • If you already have a passcode or the waiting room enabled on your existing meetings, nothing will change for these meetings.
  • If an existing meeting does not have a passcode or the waiting room enabled, these meetings will now have the waiting room feature enabled. (This is in lieu of a passcode for that meeting which would have required all old meeting information to be resent to attendees.)
  • For all existing meetings, the Host of the meeting MUST log in to Zoom and allow the attendees into the meeting before they can attend, unless the attendee falls into a custom category for bypassing the waiting room.
  • If, as a Host, you do not log in to Zoom for your meetings, you might want to consider changing your meetings to use a passcode instead.
  • There will be some options within users’ accounts to customize the waiting room to allow certain users to bypass the waiting room.

How will new meetings be affected?

For new meetings, the waiting room feature will be enabled as the default, but users will have the option to change the waiting room to a passcode before saving the meeting.

  • If a passcode is chosen versus the waiting room being enabled, the passcode will be embedded in the URL meeting invite.
  • The passcode will always be numeric because of cell phone users.
  • If a participant joins a meeting via the desktop app or mobile app and enters the meeting ID, they will need to also enter the passcode.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as these security changes are put in place. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at videoservices [at] emory [dot] edu.

Waiting Room Info:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115000332726

Changes Info:

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/115000332726#h_ef88b56b-4e8b-4976-8369-a4e5bfd4cca5

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