Retirement of web server with security vulnerability completed on time and without any data lost or compromised
ITS helped reduce risk to the institution by addressing a security vulnerability detected on an on-premise web server. The decommissioning of the nuweb50 web server, which hosted over 300 websites, was successfully completed by the June 30, 2024 deadline. In an effort involving the Office of Information Security, Web Solutions, and ITS Communications teams, the decommissioning was carefully coordinated and communicated to site owners over the course of the spring semester, beginning soon after the vulnerability was detected. Sites at Northeastern, the university’s managed WordPress hosting and site publishing platform powered by CampusPress were offered as the secure, university-branded, accessible alternative solution. CampusPress maintains the platform, WordPress, plugins, and underlying technical features of all sites on the platform, greatly reducing the amount of technical maintenance required by site owners or IT teams to keep sites safe and secure from bad actors.
Transferring tuition waiver form and process to ServiceNow allows university to retire a legacy platform, consolidate systems, and simplify a business process
Partnering with HR, ITS moved the university’s tuition waiver form from Liquid Office to ServiceNow. Moving this form allows ITS to retire the legacy Liquid Office platform and consolidate more HR benefit workflows into a single system. HR and Student Accounts, who are the teams responsible for fulfilling the tuition waiver requests, are already using ServiceNow for other day-to-day activities and moving the tuition waiver process reduces the number of applications used by these departments in processing their daily tasks. Further, employees are already using and familiar with the HR Service Center in ServiceNow for other HR-related requests.
23 Northeastern co-ops working full-time for ITS for six months starting this month
Northeastern students on co-op are getting professional experience working in a technology organization, contributing to initiatives that may directly impact their Northeastern student experience, and helping ITS move the needle forward on key initiatives in various functional roles. These positions address the co-op market demand shortage, especially in technology-related fields and for first-time co-ops. The co-ops are embedded in professional teams across ITS and range in roles that include communications coordinator, engineers, developers, consultants, program managers, QA testers, and knowledge and documentation analysts. Since starting on July 8, the co-ops have enjoyed group onboarding, their first ITS All-Staff meeting, an ice cream social, and a hands-on workshop where they learned how to build web applications directly from one of the university’s technology vendors, Outsystems.