website outage schedule for Nov. 21-22

In order to perform maintenance upgrades, the www.OregonSD.org public website will be unavailable as described below.

Friday, November 21st
8:00 pm - 1:00 am: www.OregonSD.org will be unavailable. 

Saturday, November 22nd 
www.OregonSD.org will be available in read-only mode, with possible momentary service interruptions to either certain components or to the entire site. 

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause.

Destiny unavailable June 6, 2014 at 10 PM for upgrade

An update to your Destiny 12.0 will occur June 6, 2014 at 10 p.m. CST

. As a result, Destiny will not be available for a period of two hours. Once updated, you can start using these amazing features right away.

Destiny Textbook ManagerManage and distribute textbooks using barcodes, by quantities only or use both methods!

• Add quantities of textbooks into inventory
• Circulate by ISBN barcode; enabling pull-up textbook lists for easier check-out
• Easier check-in of books without barcodes
• Simplified quantity movement – ordering,
  transferring and reporting – district wide

Destiny Library Manager

• Ability to see the "who" and "where" of a transaction in the Copy Transaction report
• Display of blocked messages in the Copy Transaction report, enabling a user to see if an update is complete/incomplete, or spot an error message

Google Drive unavailable

No, it's not just you. Google Drive is unavailable for many, if not all, users. I called Google and they are aware of the issue and are working to restore service. No ETA on a solution yet. My advice is to just check back occasionally, although we will let you know if we receive any updates.

Sorry for this happening, especially at this critical time of year.

Update from Google:
The problem with Google Drive should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support. Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.

June 4, 2014 9:29:00 AM PDT

Especially for seniors- How to take your Google Apps data with you

As this year's Senior class prepares to graduate and move on to bigger and better things, we want to make sure that they can take all their hard work with them to college or work. Most student data is stored in Google Apps for Education in the oregonsd.net domain. If you have documents or files stored on the network server, you can copy it directly to Google Drive.

Students can export their data directly from Google Drive (directions here), but there are also tools to automatically move all the contents of a Google Apps account to another Google account. For example, a student could move their documents, gmail, calendar items, and websites from student.sample@oregonsd.net  to a new personal account such as mynewaccount@gmail.com, or to their new university email address.

One tool to do this is Backupify's Migrator, available at https://www.backupify.com/free-tools/migrator-google-apps

Another is Google Takeout from the Data Liberation Front.

We (the OSD IT department) don't own these tools, so we really can't support them, but wanted to let you know they exist. Best wishes to the Seniors!

Don't use Internet Explorer

Microsoft Security Advisory 2963983 (CVE-2014-1776) is a serious Vulnerability in the Internet Explorer web browser that could Allow Remote Code Execution. Microsoft is aware of limited, targeted attacks that attempt to exploit a vulnerability in Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer 9, Internet Explorer 10, and Internet Explorer 11.

The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability. The vulnerability exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated. The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer. An attacker could host a specially-crafted website that is designed to exploit this vulnerability through Internet Explorer and then convince a user to view the website.

For more information on Microsoft Security Vulnerability 2963983, please visit:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/2963983.aspx

Skyward and other vendors are recommending that everyone use an alternate web browser until Microsoft releases a patch. 

Heartbleed issue: What you need to do

You may have heard news of the "Heartbleed" Internet security breach or gotten an email about it from friends. This email tells you what you need to do, which is, unfortunately, not as easy as just "change your passwords." It's organized in the ever-popular "Q&A" format.

Q: Is my school email safe?

A: Probably. We use Google Apps, and it was a Google researcher who found the flaw, and Google patched its systems very quickly. But you should change your OSD password just to be safe. 

Q: Is Infinite Campus safe?

A: OSD's IC server appears to be unaffected or fixed. Regardless, your IC password should be the same as your OSD email/network password, so you don't need to do anything specifically regarding IC.

Q: How about Skyward?

A: Skyward was never vulnerable due to the version of SSL it used, so your personal and HR information is not at risk.

Q: What do I need to do?

A: This is a two step process: 

1. Check to see if a site has been fixed. (Check the top 100 web sites here.)
2. AFTER a site has been fixed, then change your password for that site.

Q: Why not just change all my passwords right away?

A: Until a site has been patched, if you change your password, then the attacker can potentially get your new password as well. So wait until the site is patched before changing your password. More info here.

Q: What about sites that aren't in the top 100 list, like my bank?

A: You can check the status of any site with this tool from LastPass.

Q: Why is this such a big deal?

A: It potentially affects half of secure sites on the web, has been around for two years, and was only recently reported. More info here.

wireless network down for upgrades between 4-5 PM today (4/8/2014)

The district's wireless network will be down today for about 20 minutes sometime between 4:00 - 5:00 PM so that we can upgrade the wireless LAN controllers. You should plan to use a computer with a wired network connection during this time. 

I apologize for the short notice.