As a result of ongoing organizational changes, Web Maintenance services for NYP websites will be transitioning to a new vendor. ITS Web Communications will no longer be providing these services for hospital web sites beginning January 1, 2014.

How will this affect you?
On Friday, December 20 at 5 p.m., the existing NYP Web Maintenance service will be closed to new tickets. Users will still be able to log into the system and review or comment on existing requests. All open tickets should have the work completed by Tuesday, December 31.

You're invited to SMARTFest 2013!
All WCMC faculty, staff, and students are invited to attend our SMARTFest on Thursday, December 19, 2013 starting at 10 a.m. in the Uris Auditorium.

What is SMARTFest?

It is our pleasure to announce the appointment of Krishna Sankhavaram as the new ITS Director of Research Administrative Computing. Krishna comes to Weill Cornell from MD Anderson where he was the Director of Research Information Systems and Technology Development since 2005. While there, he was responsible for a full suite of administrative systems, as well as the development of a high performance computing facility supporting computationally intensive research.

Due to upcoming construction in the Selma Ruben Conference Center (WGC 2), meetings scheduled in this location will be moved to the Belfer Research Building (BRB) on 69th Street beginning February 1, 2014.

How will this affect you?
Meetings previously scheduled in the Selma Ruben Conference Center will be relocated to a comparable room in the BRB Conference Center on the second and third floors until construction is complete (slated for December 2014). WGC 2 cannot be reserved while there is construction.

ITS has received reports from several students regarding intermittent wireless connectivity and poor reception within the Olin and Lasdon Hall buildings. As a result, we have accelerated our project to improve wireless services in these areas. Additional wireless access points will be installed in and around the dorms rooms between February and May of 2014. More access points will increase the coverage and speed of the wireless network in Olin and Lasdon Halls.

ITS has tested all major WCMC services with Apple's new operating system, OS X Mavericks. Based on our findings, there seem to be no compatibility issues with the majority of services ITS provides, such as email and calendar (Microsoft Outlook) services, and other applications, such as Epic, VDI, and Weill Business Gateway.

Although ITS supports Apple Mail and iCal, we highly recommend using Microsoft Outlook or Webmail

This week, ITS released its FY2012-2013 Annual Report to the Weill Cornell community. A PDF copy is available for download.

In this report, you will find ITS' progress from the past fiscal year, our goals for the next year, upcoming projects, and key statistics on our operations. Additionally, we have included appendices with copies of all the ITS newsletters distributed last fiscal year, and POIS' annual report since our departments work so closely together.

The ITS Service Desk will operate with a holiday schedule during the week of Thanksgiving. Our hours of operation will be as follows:

Wednesday, November 27

Phone support:
7 a.m. - 5 p.m.

SMARTDesk in the Wood Library:
9 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Thursday, November 28 - Saturday, November 30

Phone support and walk-in service at the SMARTDesk will be unavailable.

Monday, December 2

ITS is monitoring a new "ransomware" known as Cryptoblocker that has infected computers at the Cornell Ithaca campus. Currently, this malware seems to be targeting Microsoft Windows systems. There have been no reports of infections on Weill Cornell computers, but our IT security team continues to track this malware to ensure it does not affect WCMC users.

On Wednesday, October 23, there was an interruption of core IT services. Given the extraordinary circumstances and duration of the problem, we would like to follow up with a brief description of the event and our response.

What happened?