Super User Group - 2008 Meeting Schedule

The Super User Group meets from 12:00 Noon until 1:30 PM on the second Monday of each month.

October 13, 2008 - PennGroups, Shibboleth, PennNet Phone info/update

Houston Hall - Ben Franklin Room (rm. 218)
12:00-1:30pm
Brown bag lunches welcome.

PennGroups, derived from the Internet2 open source Grouper initiative, is a system, centrally owned and managed by ISC, that will be made available to IT support professionals at Penn, for creating and managing groups of people's PennIDs to facilitate authorization decisions by applications with access to LDAP or web services. Penn has worked with the Grouper team to enhance the baseline product to better meet the needs of Penn, provide additional useful functionality to other grouper users, and allow Penn to benefit from future grouper enhancements without maintaining a separate source code instance.

In addition, we'll begin the meeting with presentations on the following:

• the Shibboleth project at Penn - what is "federated identity"?
• the PennNet Phone project (information/update)

January 14, 2008 - HD Content Delivery and Collaboration

ISC's Penn Video Network, in coordination with MAGPI, will present HD video production demonstrations for both streaming and videoconferencing applications.

PVN will review Content delivery of HD network video to iPods, desktops and projection screens on both the commodity internet and Internet 2. MAGPI will present content collaboration with HD videoconference systems such as Polycom HD and Lifesize HD on Internet2.

See the following links for HD content points
http://cmi2.yale.edu/galapagos
http://www.apple.com/education/itunesu/
http://www.upenn.edu/itunes/
http://researchchannel.com/tech/desktophdsamples.asp
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/
http://nuamps.at.northwestern.edu/screenroom/feature_archives/apr2007featB.html
http://apps.internet2.edu/dvts.html

February 11, 2008 - Current Campus Security Risks and Recommended Defenses

***Golkin Room (223) - Houston Hall***
12:00 Noon - 1:30 PM
Brown Bag lunches welcome

ISC Security will be talking about the latest security risks they are seeing on campus and the defenses they use and recommend the support community use. They will also be giving demos on some of their software of choice with configurations as well as suggested best practices.

In addition, we will be having presentations from the following persons.

• Justin Klein Keane will be giving us user tips that arose out SAS's experience with the Spider scanning tool
• John Mulhern III will be talking about Standards and Supported Products
• Mike Lazenka will be talking about the retirement of Penn's NetNews service

March 10, 2008 - Networking and Telecommunications: State of the Union

**Van Pelt Library - Class of '55 (2nd floor)**
12:00 Noon - 1:30 PM
Please do not bring food this month.

This month's meeting is our annual ISC Networking and Telecommunications: State of the Union update. Mike Palladino will report what's on the horizon for new technology in the networking and telecommunications infrastructure on campus.

In addition, we will be having the following presentations.

• John Mulhern III will be talking about Supported Products including the upcoming Spring Eval Team

April 14, 2008 - Handheld Panel Discussion

Ben Franklin Room (218) - Houston Hall
12:00 Noon - 1:30 PM
Brown Bag lunches welcome.

We'll be having a handheld panel discussion for the April SUG meeting. Topics include securing them, what's being used and supported at Penn, gotchas, backup strategies, various likes/dislikes, getting data onto them, and international usage. Bring your questions and experience to the meeting as they will both be welcome in this free-flowing discussion.

In addition, we'll begin the meeting with presentations on the following:

• Mike Lazenka will be discussing the upcoming retirement of Blue Socket and Wireless PennNet and its replacement across campus with AirPennNet
• John Mulhern III will be speaking on the University's FY2009 Desktop Recommendation

May 12, 2008 - Symantec Suites/Clients Eval Team Update

Houston Hall - Ben Franklin Room (rm. 218)
12:00-1:30pm
Brown bag lunches welcome.

The Symantec Anti-Virus Clients/Client Security Suites Evaluation Team will presenting its findings thus far. The team was charged with determining recommended configurations of features as well as best practices for deployment and an evaluation of advanced features and available server/management tools.

The team will talk about its experiences and recommendations for unmanaged installations and will be demoing the product and available configurations including the Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) 11 server. The NAV 11 for Mac product will also be discussed along with screenshots.

In addition, we will be having the following presentations.

• Mike Lazenka will be discussing the upcoming retirement of Blue Socket and Wireless PennNet and its replacement across campus with AirPennNet
• John Mulhern III will be speaking on the University's FY2009 Desktop Recommendations along with a reminder about his upcoming ITO presentation regarding end of purchases (Wed, May 14th)
• Amy Phillips will be giving a review of the IT Staff Convention including how things went, available notes, comments received (and a reminder to submit our evaluations), and vendor availability for follow-up
• John Lupton will be giving an overview of the upcoming assortment of SANS classes being offered on campus June 16-20

June 9, 2008 - Supported Products Eval Team Results

Houston Hall - Ben Franklin Room (rm. 218)
12:00-1:30pm
Brown bag lunches welcome.

The Green IT and Instant Messaging Client Supported Products teams will be presenting their findings at this month's SUG meeting. We'll also be having a brief update from the Symantec Eval team.

In addition, we'll begin the meeting with presentations on the following:

• We'll have a few words on the upcoming changes to wireless on campus
• We'll have a final reminder on the end date for ISC's NetNews service
• A member of ISC Security will be available for PGP key-signing
• There might be a brief "informational treat" at the end as well

July 14, 2008 - Zimbra is coming (very soon) - What is it? How does it effect me?

Houston Hall - Ben Franklin Room (rm. 218)
12:00-1:30pm
Brown bag lunches welcome.

ISC Networking & Telecommunications will be rolling out the next generation of its mail service, currently known as Pobox. The next generation will be based on the Zimbra collaboration suite of products and services. The cutover date from the current Pobox (Unix) server to the next generation Zimbra server will take place July 25th into the 26th. Adam Preset and Criss Keating will be giving a rundown of the services being offered and expectations people can look forward to including how it relates to ISC's Exchange Server.

In addition, we will be having the following presentations.

• Melissa Muth will be giving a "60-second" overview of the new IT policy on Server-Managed Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and will be taking any questions you may have

August 11, 2008 - CoSign and the strong Authentication project

Houston Hall - Ben Franklin Room (rm. 218)
12:00-1:30pm
Brown bag lunches welcome.

CoSign is being implemented to replace the current Penn Websec authentication facility. Websec is scheduled to be retired in June 2009, so all application areas currently using the Websec facility will migrate to CoSign for authentication. Users will continue to use PennKey and password to access authenticated web pages and services.

The CoSign implementation is a component of the strategic authentication effort, providing a widely used and supported application, which positions Penn for increased security initiatives such as two-factor authentication and Shibboleth (federated web authentication between institutions).

We'll be getting an overview of the strong Authentication project as well as a fully detailed presentation on the CoSign project, timelines, what it means, and how you will be impacted.

September 8, 2008 - Annual State of Computing Address

Houston Hall - Ben Franklin Room (rm. 218)
12:00-1:30pm
Brown bag lunches welcome.

Robin Beck, Vice President, Information Systems & Computing at the University of Pennsylvania will join us for our annual State of Computing Address. She will be giving us a rundown of the past year from a campus-wide perspective and a look into the year ahead.