• As a follow-up to the Zambia webcast, monthly WebEx sessions are being scheduled to connect UMB personnel to personnel in Africa.
• We are assisting Stephen Ohakanu, Kristen Stafford and the IT team residing in African countries with their IT infrastructure, data management and information security.

• CITS staff are working diligently on the project to ensure all network, computer and audio-visual needs are addressed in the new building.

• A consolidated application is being used by UMB and UMCP. Both campuses access the system through a single portal with their university ID and password. The project achieved a key goal of allowing combined reporting of research proposals and awards generated by both universities.  The next step with this project is the development of consolidated UMB/UMCP research productivity reports.

• A Data Trust Committee (DTC), Chaired by Dr. Jarrell, has been formed to provide oversight, develop policies, and make recommendations related to research use of patient data in clinical information systems of the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) entities.  The DTC will assist with and support the NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award that UMB has been won in partnership with JHU.

• Individuals throughout the UMB and UMMS enterprise are collaborating, meeting regularly and sharing IT security information; CITS staff are also participating with individuals at other USM institutions on the USM Information Security Council.

• The new financial system went “live” successfully on October 2, 2019.  It has been a smooth transition to the new system.  Data analytics software is being used to develop financial dashboard indicators and reports.

• The student system was successfully upgraded to the newest version this year; a student recruitment system was implemented for the Graduate School, the School of Nursing, and the School of Social Work this year. 

• Faculty from each school are meeting with Christina Cestone to discuss and identify strategies for professional development and innovative uses of technology in teaching. They are working on 3^rd annual UMB Teaching with Technology Day in spring 2020.
• There have been 16 new online courses developed this year in the Center.

• IT staff are working collaboratively to develop a list of standards, both hardware and software, for instructional spaces that can be adopted by every instructional program at UMB.  This standard approach will support and benefit individual programs as well as inter-professional education by giving faculty the ability to roam from one room and building to another and use the technology without having to receive in-depth training.

• Work is underway to enhance IT systems and applications for Philanthropy, e.g., implementing a new electronic processing of gifts; upgrading the system for communicating with alumni; enhancing the prospect tracking system.

• CITS staff are collaborating with staff in the SMC Campus Center to plan and perform a complete upgrade of the audio-visual equipment in the Center. The ballroom will be completed first with the installation planned from mid-December 2019 to January 2020.  The AV equipment in the other rooms in the Center will be completed immediately after the ballroom is finished.

• The Blackboard eLearning application, used by all schools, is migrating to the cloud version.  The migration will be completed in December 2019.

• The UMB Alert System was recently migrated to a new system, the EverBridge System.

• There will be upgrades made to the UMB telephony infrastructure this year which will include introducing the “soft client”, where telephone calls can be made directly from computing devices.

• UMB has purchased DocuSign.  A project plan for implementing this electronic signature software is currently being developed.

• The Maryland Office of Legislative Audit (OLA) resulted in just one IT/IS Discussion Note (DN).  This one DN was not deemed worthy to be included in the final University of Maryland, Baltimore Audit Report that was released to the public in July 2019.  There weren’t any IT findings in the final legislative audit report for UMB.

• Every day we are addressing security threats that could affect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of sensitive data located on UMB systems through the use of sophisticated technologies.
• Our first line of defense is the UMB firewall which is configured to deny all traffic by default and only allowing access to systems via specific network ports. The firewall prevents approximately 96 million attempts daily to get unauthorized access to the UMB network, computers, and data.
• The campus system for email delivery, anti-spam and anti-virus, is also monitored continuously since about 75% of all incoming email is identified as some type of security threat and must be blocked.
• Daily scans of the UMB network and computers are undertaken to search for and address any found vulnerability inside the University network.
• We have implemented SSL Inspection, which is another tool to prevent malicious threats from entering the campus network. Approximately 80% of Internet “traffic” attempting to enter our campus network is encrypted, and SSL inspection decrypts and inspects this traffic for malicious threats before it can enter the network and attach malware to UMB computing devices.

• The UMB security awareness training campaign is continuing this year with additional training and educational activities being offered.
  • The cybersecurity awareness training includes courses on privacy, data protection, handling sensitive information; mobile device security; and ramsomware.
  • The cybersecurity training also includes simulated phishing tests to help the UMB community become more cybersecurity aware and better prepared to safeguard the information assets that are entrusted to us.

• A OneCard building access project has been underway which automatically removes individuals from the building access system when they leave the University;
• An electronic form is now being used for requesting and approving building/room access.
• The final phase of the project is an entitlement review of all individuals who currently have electronic access to UMB buildings and areas in buildings. 

• The European Union’s (EU) GDPR is a privacy law that governs the use of personally identifiable information (PII) obtained in the European Union (EU).  The GDPR provides legal rights to people who are residents of the EU when their personal data are collected.  The GDPR imposes legal obligations on entities that control personal data collected in the EU.  A UMB Privacy/GDPR working group is implementing actions to address this regulation.

• A new UMB web accessibility policy complies with requirements to provide equitable access to web based content and services for individuals of all abilities.

• An IT satisfaction survey was administered in spring 2019. Results for two key items are below.
• The Likert opinion scale was used: 1-very dissatisfied to 5-very satisfied. 

How satisfied are you that IT personnel take a “customer-oriented” approach to helping you? 

Please rate your overall satisfaction with the IT services you receive.