Students will have free access to the entire Adobe Creative Cloud Suite on their personal computers in two to four weeks, said Ravi Pendse P’17, vice president for computing and information services and chief information officer, at the Undergraduate Council of Students general body meeting Wednesday. The software will not be available for alums due to cost and licensing issues, he said.
CIS has worked to increase student access to Rosetta Stone, Microsoft Office, Philo TV, wireless networks, Google drive space, air media and Adobe programs in response to feedback from undergraduates and UCS members, Pendse said.
CIS also plans to make two-factor authentication available to students beginning next semester, Pendse said. The login system would ask “for a password and a special code that is generated each single time that is perhaps sent to your smart phone,” he said.
To avoid annoyance, “the system does allow you to check a box that says challenge me every 30 days” instead of every day, Pendse said. “The idea is to combine something you know, like your password, with something you have, like your smart phone, and if those two things can be combined, then we can actually eliminate some of the potential malicious attacks,” he said.
Two-factor authentication is already available with Gmail and Shibboleth accounts, he said.
Brown faces about 30,000 cyber security attacks on the average day and has faced up to 60,000 in one day, Pendse said, adding that “a lot of people unfortunately fell for” recent phishing threats during employee pay roll increases. This fiscal year, 253 accounts have been compromised due to phishing, he said.
“We continue to update wireless networks,” a process that will be completed across campus in about a year, he added.
Pendse noted that CIS staff members read What to Fix Brown, the council’s online feedback forum launched earlier this semester.
The council also edited and adopted a letter to the administration regarding mental health resources on campus “with the ultimate goal of creating an endowment for mental health at Brown,” said Justice Gaines ’16, a UCS general body member and candidate for UCS president. The endowment “is a huge ask” but “well worth it,” Gaines said.
UCS Elections Board Chair Heather Sabel ’17 drafted the letter following the open forum UCS hosted last Wednesday, said UCS President Maahika Srinivasan ’15.
Srinivasan said she wants to keep the letter “internal to campus” until the administration has a chance to respond. The council published the letter on its website and as a Herald guest column Thursday.
Srinivasan also announced that the Rockefeller Library is now open 24 hours a day, five days a week as “a direct result of the conversations” at last week’s open forum.
The Brown Alumni Association Board of Governors will hold open hours at the Sharpe Refectory Friday at 12:30 p.m., said Sazzy Gourley ’16, UCS vice president, UCS presidential candidate and chair of the UCS Outreach and Advocacy committee. “Hopefully this will set a tone of people in governing bodies being accessible,” Gourley said.
The UCS Student Activities Committee has started planning for UCS week at the end of April, said UCS Student Activities Chair E-Soo Kim ’15. For the week’s main event, President Christina Paxson P’19 will deliver a “State of Brown” address, followed by a 50-minute question-and-answer session, Srinivasan said.
