ISC Progress Report, December 2017
Happy Holidays to All!
Here’s a brief report on many of our major activities,
organized by our five strategic themes.
Increase Value Through Differentiation & Innovation
Information Security CSO50 Award: Several ISC members will receive the
CSO50 Award this February for their work to dramatically improve attribution and automation that supports incident handling. The CSO50 Award recognizes organizations for a security initiative that demonstrates outstanding business value and thought leadership. As a result of their work, 86% of incoming Tier 1 information security events are now routed automatically to the relevant party and their LSP. The automation of these important, but lower risk, events allows the Penn SOC to quickly and effectively address more costly, high-risk events. One example: proactive detection of host compromises is now more than 85%.
Two-Step Verification: ISC launched
Two-Step Verification to all Staff across campus to enhance PennKey authentication, and increase security of users' personal data as well as data in Penn's information systems. More than 14,000 PennKey holders are now enrolled in Two-Step!
New Enterprise Information & Analytics Microsite: ISC launched a new
Enterprise Information & Analytics microsite for information about the Data Warehouse and centrally-supported query tools (BusinessObjects and QlikView). Clients can get institutional data from many applications to perform queries, analysis, and reporting.
HireIT: HireIT, which provides high-quality IT support services to Schools and Centers, enhanced its web pages, including new details on
Service Tiers & Features. The Penn Biden Center was opened in October, where HireIT, Classroom Technology Services, and Technology Services all contributed to the successful transition into the new space. All HireIT clients were also included in the ISC initiatives to reset PennKey passwords and enroll in Two-Step Verification. In Q1 this year, 57% of all 1,724 HireIT tickets were resolved in one day or less, with 36% of all tickets resolved in only four hours or less.
Project Management Office: In addition to managing key projects, the
PMO project managers recently hosted the following events and professional training opportunities: Project Jam Session, 2nd Annual Open House, Estimating & Budgeting, Risk & Issues, Stakeholder Engagement & Project Team Dynamics, and The Power of the POP Chart. There will be a
Project Partners SIG meeting and presentation on Project Baselining on January 11. The next
Project Jam Session will be on February 28.
Lynda.com: ISC enhanced the webpages for
Lynda.com, including new
FAQs. Lynda.com is an online training library that provides access to tutorials covering a wide selection of topics.
PennO365: The
PennO365 advisory team has been upgrading the service across campus:
- Microsoft regularly changes their licensing packages and the team is making sure everyone at Penn has the right licensing bundle enabled. Part of this effort is to enable Skype for Business for everyone. Skype for Business’ chat functionality is the recommended replacement for Jabber for non-IT folks.
- The team is planning to add additional security features to PennO365: most likely Microsoft’s Advanced Threat Protection. It is also working to enable integration of the PennO365 message tracing and authorization logs into the Splunk service.
- The fundamental issues with the slowdown of Cloud Control have been resolved.
- After working with our clients, the team postponed the retirement of the @exchange.upenn.edu mail domain to June 30, 2018. Client Care is working on a communications package with regular updates to take place throughout the first half of the calendar year, 2018.
- The much-anticipated O365 Teams functionality was enabled for the PennO365 tenant in November.
Business Optimization, Harmonization & Transparency
Data Center Move: ISC is planning the migration from the 3401 Walnut
Data Center, with construction for the expansion of the Pennovation Data Center beginning in January. To date, ISC and Penn Facilities have partnered to complete preliminary activities associated with the build out of the extended Data Center space. Formal meetings for clients currently housed in the 3401 Walnut Data Center facility will begin in mid-January. Activities are on target to meet the December 2018 target for 3401 Walnut Data Center decommissioning.
Strengthen & Optimize IT @ Penn
Human Capital Management: The
Human Capital Management (HCM) program aims to increase Penn’s HR and Payroll work efficiency, enhance response to changes in regulatory and compliance issues, improve the user experience, and strengthen information quality and access. Check out the
HCM Update for the latest news and developments.
PennERA Upgrade: The
PennERA application upgrade was successfully implemented in August. This upgrade enables Penn to support the new NIH forms that are mandated for use by the Federal Government by January 25, 2018, and will ensure electronic submissions of grant proposals continue
.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous Improvement: ISC's Priorities Program includes three major projects: Billing, Financial & Funding (BFF); Client Intake, Follow-up & Reporting (CIFR); and Services. Stay tuned for more details coming soon.
Cloud First
Online Giving Application: ISC worked with DAR to develop and launch a new cloud-based
Online Giving application that centrally lists all places constituents can make donations and designate gifts. It’s easy to use, and features a robust search function and a simple e-form to process donations
. Thank you for all of your support!
The ISC Leadership Team
