TechNews

UC Davis faculty and staff can access Amazon Web Services (AWS) at significantly reduced rates, thanks to the latest UC-wide enterprise agreement. This initiative, brought to our campus by Information and Educational Technology (IET), opens a world of cloud computing resources to our campus community. AWS, a renowned cloud platform, provides numerous on-demand services from Amazon.com’s data centers, including computing resources, data storage, and much more. 

Information and Educational Technology (IET) is excited to announce that UC Davis and UC Davis Health will be co-hosting UC Tech Annual Conference in 2024! Mark your calendars – the three-day event will be held on Sunday, October 27, 2024, in Sacramento, and on Monday, October 28 and Tuesday, October 29 in Davis.  

Click here to check out the UC Tech 2024 website and sign up for the latest news on the conference. 

Data Privacy Day is marked each year on January 28. An international effort to raise awareness about respecting privacy, safeguarding data, and enabling digital trust, Data Privacy Day began in the United States and Canada in January of 2008 as an extension of its European counterpart. In Europe, Data Protection Day commemorates the January 28, 1981, signing of Convention 108, the first legally binding international treaty on privacy and data protection.

Disclaimer: The AI landscape is rapidly evolving. This content may not reflect the latest changes or recommendations from the University of California or UC Davis. For the most recent information, go to https://ai.universityofcalifornia.edu or https://iet.ucdavis.edu/aggie-ai.

Update: Since publishing this story, three IT Service Desk Pilot participants have been hired at UC Davis.

Lifelong learning? New professional opportunities? A stronger community? Tech talent pipeline?  The IT Service Desk pilot checks all the boxes and more, with positive outcomes for everyone involved, from pilot participants to UC Davis, and the greater Sacramento community.  

The holiday season is about giving, not taking. Be aware of unsolicited emails, phone calls, text messages, or social media messages with holiday themes that ‘phish’ for your personal and financial information.

Holiday scams often indicate urgency, offer jobs but ask you to pay first, ask you to send money in return for more money later, provide gift cards or gift card information, bail family members out of jail, transfer funds, and reset your passwords.

An increase in attendees, participation, and engagement were hallmarks of this year’s Summer Institute on Teaching and Technology (SITT), held virtually over the course of two days on September 14 and 15, 2023. The annual event showcased how instructors are using technology in creative ways to help students succeed. This year, presenters honed in on key issues facing instructors—improving classroom communication and collaboration.

In many classrooms, instructors use touchscreen tablets to operate overhead projectors. It's part of a host of technology offered to instructors to enhance lessons at UC Davis. But while setting up for a history class this summer, UC Davis alum and guest instructor, Seth Clark quickly realized he was going to have difficulty using the touchscreens due to his sight impairment.

“When I touched it, there was nothing on the tablet to indicate where the buttons were,” Clark said. “It made it impossible for me to turn on the projector.”

Practicing good cybersecurity is essential to protecting the UC’s mission to provide world-class teaching, research, and public service. There are many ways we do this here at UC Davis, but one big piece of the cybersecurity puzzle is data classification. After all, you can’t protect what you don’t know you have!

Members of the campus community, especially students, are reminded to keep an eye out for false jobs listings when searching for work or internship opportunities online. 

Scammers create and maintain fraudulent postings on many reputable job boards, for monetary gain, including Handshake and even networking sites like LinkedIn. While every position that is posted to Handshake is vetted, sometimes fraudulent postings make it through. 

Email is the most common vector for cyber security attacks in higher education. The average cost of a data breach in 2022 was $4.35 million and the cost only increased when fraudulent emails (or phishing attempts) were the initial attack vector.  

Most often motivated by financial gain, hackers frequently employ social engineering techniques to gain unauthorized access to data and accounts via email (“phishing”), text messaging (“smishing”), phone (“vishing”), or online services such as social networking. Click here to learn how to spot a scam.

To promote digital inclusion and belonging, campus technology services have started displaying lived names for students, faculty, staff, and other affiliates. A lived name reflects a person’s true identity and may differ from their legal name.  

Beginning November 1, 2023, Duo will have a new look and a speedier login process. Duo is UC Davis’s multi-factor authentication app which provides an additional layer of cyber security protection when Aggies access email, online storage, and other technology and university services. 

Starting Monday, September 18, 2023, Duo, UC Davis’ multi-factor authentication app, will no longer work on certain operating systems, browsers, and security protocols for mobile devices and desktop computers. Members of the campus community use Duo as an additional layer of protection to access email, online storage, and other technology and university services.