Arizona State University
 Windows Networking User Group

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Meeting Notes for October 2, 2003
    Announcements
    Pat announced that there were spaces left in the Windows 2000 - Windows 2003 training class that would be offered to those who are currently on the waiting list.

    Cecilia introduced the new Steering Committee for WNUG:

    Chair - Cecilia Winnegar (Engineering)
    Co-Chair - Karra Lawrence (Downtown Center)
    Note Taker - Pat Schneider (East Campus)
    Members - David Lee (West Campus)
    Robin Manke-Cassidy (IT)
    Mehran Yahya (IT representative)
    Sharon Bushart (Liberal Arts & Sciences)
    Russ Mohn (VPRC)

    Gary Reis indicated that nominations for the chair and co-chair of CCC are needed. He will be sending a note out to everyone later this month soliciting such.

    Network Scanning
    Jack Hsu discussed the issue of network scanning. Currently there is a policy that allows you to scan your own network, but no one else. After the latest round of virus attacks and vulnerabilities, a group from IT started checking to see what other universities were doing to prevent such things from happening. They found that the University of Connecticut actually scans each workstation at the time it DHCP registers for it to be current on patch levels and virus prevention software. IT now has this software and has been running various scans against our network. They found over 7,000 vulnerable workstations on the 129.219.x.x range and worse on the 149.169.x.x range. There were some false-positive reports - the scan doesn't distinguish between Mac's, Linux or Unix workstations.

    Jack indicated that with the start of this semester the process for DHCP registration has changed. Once a workstation is initially plugged into the network, the user is automatically directed to the DHCP registration page rather than having to invoke it manually. They have received positive feedback for making this change.

    Jack showed a proposed flowchart for how a workstation gets DHCP registered and what happens if it doesn't pass the security criteria. Basically, when a workstation is trying to register to DHCP, it will be scanned. If it doesn't pass the first scan the user will be instructed to fix the problems or contact his/her system administrator to help correct the issue(s).

    There was considerable amount of discussion on how best to register with DHCP on behalf of someone, or when a person cannot logon to a domain to get into the workstation itself. Unless a user can login locally to his/her workstation, he/she may not be able to get the workstation registered with DHCP. This is unacceptable as many departments/colleges do not put local user accounts on the workstation or give the user access to the default local administrator ID.

    Presentations
    SUS Server Installation/Implementation at ASU - East
    Sean Garrett and Pedro Carrasquilla gave a presentation on how they installed and implemented the SUS server at ASU - East. A copy of their PowerPoint presentation can be found on the web site.
    PatchLink
    A presentation was given by the representatives of PatchLink on their patch management product.


    Next meeting - Thursday, November 6, 2003 9:30-11:30am Computing Commons Auditorium



   
  Updated February 8th, 2005