As we approach the fiscal year-end close, the Office of the CIO wants to bring to your attention a rise in email-based threats. These threats often involve finance-related keywords in the subject lines, such as 'Invoice' and 'Payment', including possible links to a shared file.

Please take the following precautions:

1. Be Extra Cautious: Alert your teams to be vigilant for any suspicious email activity.
2. Use Reporting Tools: Encourage your team members to use the 'Report' and 'Report Message' buttons for any emails that seem suspicious.
3. Verify Emails: If you know the sender and have a confirmed and trusted phone number, call them at the known good number to confirm the validity of a questionable email.  Compromised email accounts and false phone numbers listed in phishing emails are often answered by attackers and can be used to convince you to take an action that will result in compromise of your account, and compromise of UNM data.

FastInfo Answer #7930 has additional information on phishing:  What is Phishing Email? (custhelp.com).

For assistance with UNM IT services, please contact UNM IT Customer Support Services at 505-277-5757. Hours of operation are Monday – Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., except during University Holidays.   

Due to the healthcare nature of UNM Health and Health Sciences (HHS), there may be variations to services and support for HHS students, faculty, and staff.? If you experience any issues regarding HHS technology services, please contact the following:?During regular business hours, 8-5, Monday-Friday, contact the Health Sciences IT Service Desk at 505-272-1694.? Outside of regular business hours contact the Health IT Service Desk at 505-272-3282 (2-DATA).? 

On behalf of the Chief Information Officer,

At UNM, we all have an important role to play in keeping information secure and private. As part of UNM IT's ongoing efforts to improve our security approach, we want to make you aware of an upcoming enhancement to protect against online threats. This upgrade, called BloxOne Threat Defense, is designed to shield both university and personal computers from accessing websites known for hosting harmful software like viruses or ransomware. Once implemented, this upgrade will provide protection for computers connected to UNM's network, Wi-Fi, VPN, or guest Wi-Fi, ensuring a safer online experience for everyone.

NOTE: These changes apply to UNM networks including the branch campuses. Changes to network services provided by and to Health and Health Sciences, if any, will be communicated by and coordinated through Health and Health Sciences CIO Notices.

What does this mean for you?

Beginning 06/11/2024, access to known malicious web sites will be blocked. Users will be redirected to a web page indicating they are attempting to access a malicious web site and provided information if they believe this is an error or if they need access to the web site to meet legitimate research, academic, or administrative business purposes. See FastInfo 7972 for additional information.

All institutions, public and private, are subject to ransomware, malware and other cyber threats. UNM BloxOne Threat Defense is a hybrid cybersecurity solution that leverages Domain Name System (DNS) as the first line of defense to detect and block cyber threats. BloxOne Threat Defense only blocks verified web sites with a high severity threat and a high confidence accuracy rate. Sites are not blocked based on content or application.

For assistance with UNM IT services, please contact UNM IT Customer Support Services at 505-277-5757. Hours of operation are Monday – Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., except during University Holidays. 

Due to the healthcare nature of UNM Health and Health Sciences (HHS), there may be variations to services and support for HHS students, faculty, and staff.  If you experience any issues regarding HHS technology services, please contact the following: During regular business hours, 8-5, Monday-Friday, contact the Health Sciences IT Service Desk at 505-272-1694.  Outside of regular business hours contact the Health IT Service Desk at 505-272-3282 (2-DATA). 

To ensure adherence to the vendor's release schedule and to maintain adherence to Federal regulations, UNM IT is upgrading Banner applications on Saturday, October 12th, 2024, starting at 6:00 am and ending at 3:00 pm. Final functional and acceptance testing will be performed the following day, on October 13th.

The following services will be unavailable during the upgrade:
- Apex Banner & Apex ODS
- AppWorx
- Banner 9 Forms and Self-Service
- Banner INB
- Boomi
- business.unm.edu (RRT)
- ePrint
- LoboWeb
- MyUNM (Users will be able to login, but not access "channels")
- ODS IA Admin
- Pinnacle
- police.unm.edu
- Xtender

Please contact UNM IT at (505) 277-5757 with any questions.

In order to facilitate security and ensure uptime, IT Networks will replace the voice firewalls at 10pm on Saturday, October 12. During this time, we expect a brief outage for UNM IT Voice-over-IP phones and the UNM softphone application. The UNM Voice Mail system will be unavailable during the replacement. Critical numbers with auto attendants will be routed to alternate lines to ensure continuity of service.

Outage:
· 10pm to 2am on Saturday, October 12
· We expect an outage of 10 minutes or less. While unlikely, it is possible, that the outage could be lengthier and more impactful. Updates will be provided on IT Alerts.

Impacted Services:
· IT Voice-over-IP
· IT Voicemail

For assistance with UNM IT services, please contact UNM IT Customer Support Services at 277-5757. Hours of operation are Monday – Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Starting the afternoon of Saturday, October 12th, UNM IT will be updating the SDDC NSX Network Virtualization Functionality (NVF) and associated components. During this change window, UNM Students, Faculty, and Staff may experience a temporary interruption and termination of active connections to UNM Hosted Applications and Services (MyUNM, LoboWeb, Registration, Banner, etc) inside of LoboCloud (UNM's Private Cloud). End users who experience a drop of session are encouraged to re-connect after the change window is complete and stability of the environment should returned by 5:00pm Saturday. Work will be extended into Sunday, Oct13th, 8am to 5pm. Sunday's risk of impact is far lower to end users than Saturday.

Impacted services include but not limited to:
Banner
ODS
AppWorx
BOOMI
My Reports
Banner Training
UNM Marketplace
Web Content Management (Cascade)
eSurvey
Confluence
Pinnacle
LoboWeb
Apex Banner & Apex ODS
ODS IA Admin
uAchieve

To improve our cloud security posture and align with Microsoft security best practices and recommendations, UNM IT will make changes to Azure Portal and management API access on Tuesday, October 22 between 8:00 AM and 9:00 AM.

No outage or impact is expected.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to improve the security of your information.

To apply important system-level security patches, UNM IT will be upgrading production Oracle databases, RedHat servers, and APEX upgrade beginning Saturday, Oct 26th, 2024 starting at 7:00 AM completing at 12:00 PM.

These services include:
BANP (Banner)
ODSP (ODS)
AWP (AppWorx)
BOOMI
RPTP (My Reports)
BANTR (Banner Training)
B2BMON (Marketplace)
WCMP (Web Content Management)
ORAP1 (eSurvey & password synchronization)
CONP (Confluence)
PINNP (Pinnacle)
LEARNP
LoboWeb
Apex Banner & Apex ODS
ODS IA Admin
uAchieve
business.unm.edu
Central Authentication Service (CAS)
cPanel
CUPS Print
Deparmental web hosting
DSS
DupBusters
jobdescriptions.unm.edu
ListServ
LoboCloud Linux systems (uptime > 30D)
Parchment
Scuti
sunshine.unm.edu
www.unm.edu

This communication applies to the following releases: Oracle Updates (15856), Quarterly Reboots of Redhat Systems (16084), and APEX 24.1 Upgrade (16016).

To ensure continued security and stability, UNM IT will be applying Windows Updates and rebooting servers on 10/27, 4:00 AM - 6:00 AM.

This month's updates are listed here:

https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=server+2024-10

The following services will be intermittently unavailable during the outage window:

AppXtender
Confluence
eVisions/FormFusion/Intellicheck
FAMIS
Help.UNM/Cherwell
IdentityIQ (NetID.unm.edu)
Pinnacle Reports
TMA Work Order System

Other Windows servers and services (not listed above) will be intermittently unavailable during the standard patching window described at http://it.unm.edu/availability/ (under "Hosted Windows Servers").

In order to resolve an issue with silent calls in some areas of UNM Hospital, HSC, and UNMMG, UNM Voice technicians will be resetting VoIP phones on the UNM Health side of campus at 7:00 PM.  All VoIP phones will complete a re-registration process that can take up to 15 minutes.  Phones will be reset in two waves and all VoIP phones should be back in service by 7:45 PM.

To stay current with vendor support, IT will be upgrading the wireless network controller on 10/8/2024 between 9 PM and 11 PM. Wireless users might experience a brief disruption during this upgrade.