2024

Starting on Monday, April 29, the Northwestern Online People Directory, which lists contact information for Northwestern students, faculty, and staff, will transition to NetID-authenticated use only. This change will provide the campus community with more privacy and better protection from phishing attacks and unwanted emails.

On April 11, the Northwestern IT Service Desk implemented an updated remote identity verification process for users who call in or email to reset their NetID password. These changes ensure the validation process is more accurate and aligns with industry security standards.

The campus-wide event, hosted by Northwestern Information Technology (IT) and sponsored by the Office of the Provost, showcased innovative approaches to computational and data-intensive research.

Northwestern IT is upgrading GlobalProtect, the University’s Virtual Private Network, this month. The upgrade addresses security vulnerabilities and aligns with the vendor’s upgrade window recommendations. The upgrade includes an updated interface to improve user experience.  Users can self-upgrade starting April 16, and the upgrade will be required on April 30.

At the February 2024 Extended Staff Meeting, Chris Fowler earned Northwestern IT’s highest individual staff recognition, the Employee Excellence Award, for his dedication to consistently delivering the highest standards possible of both support and leadership.

During fall 2023, Northwestern instructors and staff reduced the overall number of accessibility errors in Canvas by 27 percent. Many of the updated courses and instructors responsible for our increased accessibility can be found on the Mission: Accessible Wall of Fame

Copilot, Microsoft’s large language model chatbot, is now available to all Northwestern students, faculty, and staff. The AI-powered chatbot is integrated into the Bing search engine and designed to understand complex and natural language queries.

Northwestern IT’s Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) Enhancement initiative is underway and intended to better secure University systems and protect the identities of the community against evolving cyberattacks designed to get through existing MFA protections.

Northwestern IT, in partnership with the Office of the Provost, is pleased to announce two upcoming events showcasing the exciting research, teaching, and learning achievements of University students, postdocs, faculty, and staff.

All Northwestern researchers are invited to submit a talk to present at the Computation and Data Exchange (CoDEx) symposium on April 2. Students and postdocs are invited to submit a lightning talk, poster, or data visualization. Undergraduate and Graduate students who participate in the Poster Session or Visualization Challenge will be eligible for a chance to win the first-place prize of $3,000 towards a conference of their choice. Learn more about CoDEx and the opportunities to participate.

Join some of higher ed’s top security engineers and analysts for a paid internship this summer! The program runs June 17 through July 26 and features topics including cyber foundations training, network fundamentals, and incident response. Applications open through March 3. Space is limited. Apply today!

In the fall, Northwestern IT Teaching and Learning Technologies (TLT) surveyed students to understand better what additional features they wanted to see offered in Canvas. From that engagement, TLT customized two new features in Canvas—dark mode and adjustable fonts—with plans to add more enhancements in the coming months.

TEACHx call for proposals is now open! This annual event brings instructors, students, learning designers, and technology specialists together to make connections, begin collaborations, and learn from their peers.

The National Cybersecurity Alliance has designated January 21-27 as Data Privacy Week and a great time to review the privacy settings on your mobile apps and devices. You have a say in how your data is used! Explore the National Cybersecurity Alliance website for resources, and follow @Northwestern_IT to stay informed about how we do our part to champion data privacy throughout the year.

On Monday, January 22, Northwestern IT enabled Microsoft’s new Teams client (work or school), and users will now notice a “Try the new Teams” toggle in the upper left area of the Teams client window on both PCs and Macs. Teams web clients running in the Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome browsers will also display the toggle in enabled users’ browsers (the Firefox version is due to be released before March 31). Microsoft intends to sunset its existing client on Sunday, March 31, 2024.

Registration is now open for Research Computing and Data workshops. This winter, enhance your research skills in data science, statistics and visualization, programming, and high-performance computing. Check the full workshop schedule and register now!