A new version of Symantec AntiVirus protection is now available to download from the MEWAN website (MEWAN subscribing schools only).  There is a Windows version and a Mac OS.X version available. www.mewan.net/mewansupport/?category_id=19

Instructions are provided on the web page on how to install this update. MEWAN does not provide support to your local network in school.  You should liase your network support to deploy this update.

NB: The AV software is only available to MEWAN subscribing schools. If you experence problems with accessing these, please contact the MEWAN Helpdesk on 234 7787 or support@mewan.net

UPDATE: CTU confirm the issue is due to a failure of a core switch.  You can be assured they will work on this as a matter of upmost priority due to the number of users affected.

We’re seeing problems on the LA Core Network that are affecting MEWAN. Apologies into any inconveniences we’re are looking into it, but are confident it will be being dealt with as a matter of highest priority.

Well, it’s half time on the world cup game and both MEWAN’s upstream Internet Connections are running flat out.  We can only assume that watching the World Cup via iPlayer (or attempting to) has been somewhat popular in schools.  Our apologies to other users who might be trying to do some real work…

AUDIENCE: ICT Co-Ordinators & ICT Staff

Bypass sites are rife now, allowing Pupils to attempt to bypass the Internet security we have in place for their safety.  There are literally tens of thousands of such sites, with dozens of new sites appearing each day.  Blocking them becomes a non-trivial task.  MEWAN has written custom software that attempts to find and automatically block new sites in our global filters for our subscribing schools.  On top of that, your Cachepilot has special anti-bypass content filtering enabled.  However, a lot of new proxy sites use “https” – the secure protocol you use to login to sites like your bank, or paypal.  Your cachepilot can’t filter keywords in the content because the connection is completely encrypted.

So what to do?  What we advise is completely disable HTTPS connections for the pupils group entirely, whitelisting only any sites they may need that use that protocol.  When you think about it, there aren’t many sites where a student would legitimately need an encrypted connection.  This will block the path to all of these encrypted bypass sites, considerably enhancing safety.

We’ve produced this guide on how to setup such filtering.  Any questions?  Call the Helpdesk on 234 7787 or email support@mewan.net

ICT Security is a hot topic, and password security is a part of that.  You can access your email from anywhere in the world, which means that if someone can guess your password…so can they!  Information leaks can and do happen with very embarrassing results.  If you’re an email user, it’s time to think about the password you’ve chosen.

Good Passwords

A good password will be at least 8 characters long, contain upper and lower case characters, and at least one number of symbol like $£% etc.  A good password does not use words found in the dictionary, as hackers can and do use “dictionary attacks” to crack accounts.

Password Do’s and Don’ts

• DON´T use common names, like the name of your spouse or pet, names of football teams, TV programs, Actors, Films etc.
• DON´T use short passwords, they are much easier for a hacker to break, a password should be at least 8 characters long.
• DON´T Use sequences like 12345678 and qwertyuiop

Remembering your Password

There are many different ways but here are a couple of suggestions.

Passwords can be tricky to remember, especially if they are made up of nonsense. Try this way of making passwords you can remember:

Use a phrase with a number in it! Start with a phrase you can easily remember, like “There are twelve eggs in a dozen” and then turn it into a password by using the first character of each word and the number like this

There Are Twelve(12) Eggs In A Dozen becomes:

ta12eiad

Now change a couple of letters to upper case, in this instance, to make it easy to remember, I’ll always make the first and last characters uppercase.

Ta12eiaD

Another approach is to mash a phrase together. For example “Just Another Manic Monday”, and use the first 3 characters from each, captialising the first letter of each word.

JusAnoManMon

For extra security, Add a few digits at the end like the year you were born, or a memorable date.

JusAnoManMon76

Change your password Today! If you’re password is weak, you have a data security incident just waiting to happen.  Your password can be changed in Squirrelmail using “Options -> Change Password”.

Squirrelmain password change guide (v1) – here’s a handy guide to the process.

Due to rapidly rising use of storage on our email servers we will be automatically emptying your TRASH folder of messages over 7 days old every evening.  This will take place from Monday 21st June. If you have anything in your trash you want to keep, please make sure that you move the messages into your INBOX or another folder before that date. We have setup this guide on MEWAN about how to manage folders.  As always, email support@mewan.net if you have any worries or concerns, or call the Helpdesk.

Phishing is the practice where criminals attempt to get a user to disclose sensitive information such as bank login details.  Normally the phisher sends an email fraudulently claiming to be from your bank for example, and attempts to get you to visit a website which looks like your bank login page but it is in fact a fake.  This method always relies on the user to visit the site.  A new type of attack has emerged though which can change one of your browsing tabs to a fake site… here is an example scenario:

• You have a bunch of open tabs in your web browser, an e-mail page, Facebook, your bank account and maybe a bunch of news sites.

• While you’re reading your email say, the attack is able to hone in on tabs that haven’t been used or aren’t in focus and replace the favicon (the icon in your tab bar) and the title of the tab.

• When you click on that tab, a fake page is loaded in its place, maybe it is loaded to look like a standard login page.

• Because you already had this tab open legitimately before, you don’t bother paying any attention to the URL in the address bar and you enter in your login information.

• You’ve just sent your info to a nefarious third party..

We’ll be watching closely to see if Microsoft and Firefox have some fix for stopping this behaviour, in the meantime, make sure to look at the address bar of your sites before logging in!

There will be some maintenance work undertaken on our primary internet connection between 16:00 and 17:00 on Tuesday 11 May. During  this time you may see intermittent Internet access, however email access should be unaffected.

NOTE: If all goes well the work should take just minutes, however we have added extra time for any problems we might encounter.

MEWAN are making changes to external DNS servers this afternoon.  The work, if all goes well should affect no-one and be unnoticeable.   The changes are taking place at around 15:30 today.  If there are issues we’ll work as quickly as possible to mitigate them.

Recently, working with the North West Learning Grid we migrated to a new Internet Provider (the Joint Academic Network).  Currently the link is down, affecting many Local Authorities in the North West region.  That was the cause of the outage this morning.  We’re re-routed everything through a backup link and some very busy little servers.  The NWLG is now backup and we will shortly transfer everyone back to the primary link.

Thank you for bearing with us during these difficulties