Urgent Update: Research Computing Outages

SEE HERE for details.

Urgent: macOS Big Sur Announcement
With the recent release of macOS Big Sur, faculty, staff, and students alike have asked us about updating to Big Sur. Big Sur is the first major macOS update in many years, so it may be tempting to update right away. But, the bigger the update, the bigger the initial problems, and right now Big Sur has plenty of them…

As a department, we are strongly recommending not updating to macOS Big Sur at this time. Departmental laptops currently have the update blocked and we highly discourage anyone with a personal laptop from updating until Big Sur is further tested and the initial bugs are worked out. If you choose to do so, know that you do so at your own risk, as we are currently not supporting Big Sur as an IT department.

A few notes on Big Sur compatibility that we’ve seen firsthand:

On some older MacBook Pros, especially 2013/2014 models, the Big Sur update bricks your computer completely, to the point that you only get an unresponsive black screen when you turn it on. See here for details.
Cisco AnyConnect VPN has been causing kernel panics on multiple departmental test Macbook Pros.
If you’re currently on Mojave, you should know that Catalina and Big Sur have both stopped support for any 32bit pieces of software. There is no workaround, short of installing Mojave on a virtual machine and virtualizing the app.
There are many untested pieces of software used at a departmental level in Trinity A&S. Considering that finals are right around the corner, if you update and find yourself unable to run pieces of software essential to your final exams, we will be unable to assist.

Notice: DukeHub 2.0 Rolling Out Soon

https://sissoffice.duke.edu/new-dukehub-20

See above link for information on DukeHub 2.0.
It is recommended that faculty/staff that regularly use DukeHub attend one of the Thursday training sessions. Please email siss-dukehub@duke.edu to get signed up for the next session!

Urgent: Duke OIT Security Notice

Duke Faculty, Staff and Students,

On Oct. 28, 2020, Duke received an alert of an imminent and credible cybercrime threat involving ransomware targeting U.S. healthcare organizations. While there are no indications yet that Duke has been directly impacted, the joint Duke IT Security Offices are enacting timely and reasonable precautions that include heightened monitoring for potential security issues. We are asking everyone in our community to remain vigilant and to take steps to protect Duke and our patients:

• Do not open emails, click on links, or open attachments from unknown or suspicious senders.
• Report all suspicious emails to the IT Security Office by clicking on the “Report Phish to Duke” button or emailing security@duke.edu.
• Do not access non-work email accounts (personal email) while using a Duke-owned computer or connected to the VPN.
• Check with your IT support to ensure that your computers are fully patched, including your web browsers.
• Ensure that you are applying security updates on your home computers.
• Install the Crowdstrike Prevent for Home Use on your personal Windows machines (https://software.duke.edu/node/673).
• Effective immediately, Duke will temporarily reduce the session timeout on VPN to 10 hours to support a typical workday. The 30-minute “idle” timeout will remain unchanged.

Details about the joint cybersecurity advisory are available at https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-302a. More information on the already-seen impact across the U.S. can be found in Brian Krebs’ report: https://krebsonsecurity.com.

If you have any questions, please reach out to security@duke.edu

Richard Biever,
Chief Information Security Officer, Duke University

Randy Arvay,
Chief Information Security Officer, Duke Health