April 2020 brings reinvention and the ever-increasing use of tools such as Canvas, Mediasite, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams among our academic community as we teach, learn, and work remotely.
The number of new users on Zoom grew from 482 in February to 5,262 in March. The number of session minutes on Zoom was about 897,000 in January compared to over 4.8 million minutes in March. In the first seven days of April, K-Staters have used over 2.1 million minutes. The use of Microsoft Teams is exploding, and IT staff have ramped up to provide a support site and training.
Zoom Usage Statistics January – April 7, 2020
| New Users | Meetings | Participants | Meeting Minutes | |
| January | 602 | 3,524 | 18,538 | 897,058 |
| February | 482 | 4,271 | 21,976 | 1,107,809 |
| March | 5,262 | 16,283 | 112,531 | 4,844,047 |
| April | 629 | 6,401 | 48,914 | 2,163,031 |
Because of the many changes to our work environments, K-Staters are reminded to remain vigilant in our security practices and be wary of phishing scams and fraudulent schemes. Scammers use these uncertain times and events to trick you into sharing your password, clicking on a link, or downloading an attachment.
While our work setting might have changed, Information Technology (IT) continues to move forward with planning for infrastructure improvements including networking and the data center, upgrades to centrally scheduled classrooms, business process analysis, software needs, updates to existing systems, professional development and more, all while maintaining social distance.
Information Technology Services will perform scheduled monthly maintenance on the HRIS and KSIS systems from 10 p.m., Saturday, April 11, through 6 a.m., Sunday, April 12.
This month, we are updating password standards, which are
- A minimum of 15 to a maximum of 100 characters in length
- Must be significantly different from previous passwords
- May contain spaces but cannot start or end with a space
- Cannot be a single dictionary word
- Cannot be repetitive or sequential (e.g. ‘aaaaaaaaa,’’12345abcd’)
- Cannot be your name, username, K-State term, or name of a service
- Cannot use a previously compromised password
After April 8, the next time you receive the reminder email, change your password using the new password standards.
Comparison of Phishing Scams and Compromised eIDs
| YTD 2020 | YTD 2019 | YTD 2018 | |
| Compromised eIDs | 266 | 148 | 142 |
| Phishing scams | 338 | 371 | 145 |
| Phishing scam tickets processed | 990 | 970 | 444 |
