Featured Highlights
Did You Know?
NET+ Amazon Web Services by DLT just moved to General Availability. The service offers community members enhancements such as streamlined business associate agreements and data egress fee waiver. Learn more about the NET+ AWS offering.
Internet2 Members Receive Free Offering From SkySync
Internet2 and SkySync, a piece of middleware technology that enables higher education institutions to tightly integrate and sync or migrate files across 30+ on-premises and cloud storage services, is pleased to offer an improved free trial, as well as a new, aggressive pricing model for the NET+ SkySync service. As an exclusive benefit to Internet2 members and NET+ subscribing institutions, SkySync is offering a free trial of the software for up to 30 days and up to 300GB of File Transfer/Sync at no cost. New pricing for the NET+ SkySync service is detailed on the NET+ products and services website. Program participants can also take advantage of a 50% discount on current SkySync services by participating in the NET+ program.
Featured News
Smart Strategies to Maximize Security in the Cloud
This Ed Tech article explains how colleges take advantage of cloud services without compromising security. Access tips from leading NET+ Cloud adopter institutions like the University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia, who discuss vendor contracts, new security tools, and best practices to maximize security in the cloud.
What Amazon Web Services (AWS) Data Egress Means for Higher Education: A Q&A with Internet2
In March, AWS announced a data egress discount offering to qualified researchers and academic customers, making it easier for researchers to use its cloud storage, computing, and database services by waiving data egress fees. Andrew Keating, Ph.D., director of NET+ Cloud services at Internet2 discussed the impact of the data egress for higher education and how the cloud is transforming research in the academic world.
Events
Save the Date!
Session 2: NET+ GEN2 Streamlined Procurement
Save the date—Monday, July 19th at 12pm EDT/9am PDT— to learn more about program changes that support streamlined procurement. Learn about an enhanced NET+ procurement process, using recommendations by a working group from member institutions procurement experts representing a broad cross-section of public procurement needs across fourteen different states. The webinar will be made available to a broader campus audience including IT Directors, Campus Procurement Officers, and Cloud Service Leads. Please encourage those representatives from your campuses to put a hold on their calendars now for a July 19th, 12:00 EDT start time.
Connection information: will be sent to the Internet2 CIO list soon, or contact netplus-admin@internet2.edu to request the connection information.
Register to attend the Internet2 Technology Exchange in Miami
The annual Internet2 Technology Exchange is a premier technical event in the global R&E community, convening the community’s technology visionaries—including chief technologists, scientists, engineers, architects, operators and students from around the U.S. and the globe. Register to attend the upcoming Technology Exchange in Miami, September 25-28.
Featured Resources
Three Lessons for Combatting Cloud Services Outage Headaches
In this blog post, Andrew Keating considers how the recent outage of a learning management system at multiple universities left faculty members and students worried that they wouldn't be able to finish finals--and new considerations for service downtime, SLAs, and “exit strategy” issues for cloud services in higher education. Read the full Inside Higher Ed Article on the outage.
Three Steps For Handling Cloud Service Outages: Community Lessons to Alleviate Pain Points
Blog post by Andrew Keating-- In part one of this blog series, the case of a learning management system outage is considered along with general lessons to draw from this scenario, as the research and education community increasingly relies upon externally provided IT services. Here are a few concrete steps the community could take to prepare for potential outages and thus alleviate some of the headaches they can cause.
QuickStart Guide and Template for Building a Compliant Computing Environment in AWS
Institutions now have a new solution for NIST 800-171 compliance issues. A consortium consisting of Notre Dame, Duke, Penn State, Purdue, Ohio State and Amazon Web Services recently developed a QuickStart guide and template for building a compliant computing environment in AWS. The guide provides both the scripts needed to build a basic infrastructure and a compliance matrix mapping security controls to the NIST requirements. This offering greatly eases the burden on institutions seeking to comply with this new mandate before the December 2017 deadline.
NET+ Finance Review and GEN2 Program Introduction Webinar
Since 2012, the peer-driven Internet2 NET+ initiative has been focused on identification, development, and stewardship of secure, reliable, and cost-effective cloud solutions for higher education. Last year, the program completed a full community review, which provided outstanding guidance on how to tune the initiative to meet the fast growing and evolving landscape of cloud offerings. Hosted by members of the NET+ Program Advisory Group, access this webinar recording which evaluates the results of last year’s program review and financials, and introduces initial changes (referred to as “GEN2”) that will provide new online benefits to member campuses. Through these changes, and more input and participation from members, even greater benefit can be delivered to institutions.
Access the recorded webinar.
The Threat of Ransomware and Ways to Prevent It
In this blog post by Nick Lewis and Sean O’Brien, read how the increase in risk from ransomware and distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks over the last year have spurred many campuses to adopt new security controls and add tools to protect their institutions—while balancing a significant number of potential information security risks, compliance and audit related activities, as well as budget restrictions.
Learn more about this topic and access information about NET+ Code42 CrashPlan.
