IT Services has recently launched the ITBytes podcast, hosted by Noelette Hurley featuring Deirdre Keane and produced by Eoin O’Sullivan.  ITBytes will chat about all things IT in UCC and introduce you to a variety of guests from UCC staff, students, alumni and beyond.  It aims to inform, demystify IT and share some interesting stories with the guests featured on the podcast.

Ruben works as Videographer and Photographer in Audio Visual & Media Services. Originally from Mexico, Ruben came to Cork in 2020 and studied a MA in Film and Screen Media in UCC. Ruben joined the Audio Visual & Media team in 2022 as student staff and commenced his current intern role in January 2023.  Ruben shares what a typical working day is like for him.

In conversation with Barry O'Sullivan, Head of IT Operations, UCC.

Barry completed a BComm and an MBS in Business Information Systems in UCC and then worked in PwC for 6 years as a Systems Implementation Engineer working with various clients including Department of Education, CERT, Department Social Welfare, and GPA. Barry then moved to Motorola before moving to Avery Dennison in Cork as an IT Manager. In 2002 Barry joined UCC IT Services working in Enterprise Applications on new systems development and data warehousing projects. One of the first jobs Barry was tasked with was the development of a new system to support anonymous marking – this led to the development and rollout of DMIS that is still widely used today 20 years later! In 2014 Barry became Head of Platform Delivery Group in IT Services with responsibility for the campus networks and datacentres and earlier this year Barry was appointed Head of IT Operations.

IT Services has recently launched the ITBytes podcast, hosted by Noelette Hurley featuring Deirdre Keane and produced by Eoin O’Sullivan.  ITBytes will chat about all things IT in UCC and introduce you to a variety of guests from UCC staff, students, alumni and beyond.  It aims to inform, demystify IT and share some interesting stories with the guests featured on the podcast.

IT Services has recently launched the ITBytes podcast, hosted by Noelette Hurley featuring Deirdre Keane and produced by Eoin O’Sullivan.  ITBytes will chat about all things IT in UCC and introduce you to a variety of guests from UCC staff, students, alumni and beyond.  It aims to inform, demystify IT and share some interesting stories with the guests featured on the podcast.

Introducing ITBytes, IT Services new podcast, hosted by Noelette Hurley featuring Deirdre Keane and produced by Eoin O'Sullivan. Noelette, Deirdre and Eoin work in IT Services. Noelette as an IT Analyst working mostly on web related activities, Deirdre as Communications Coordinator and Eoin as an IT Analyst working within AVMS. ITBytes will cover a variety of topics from navigating the 'wild west' of smart phone explosion in secondary schools in Ireland, to how an interest in printing presses led to creation of Ireland's very first website in UCC.  You can listen to the introduction episode of ITBytes on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

It has been a busy award season for IT Services. Some of our colleagues received their Long Service Award in November and Staff Recognition Awards in December.

Pictured above: IT Services staff at the UCC Staff Recognition Awards. Back left to right: Kilian Murphy, Eugene van den Hurk, Barry Foley and Barry O’Sullivan. Front left to right: Patrick Nagle, Ruth Butler, Sean O’Mahony and Christopher McElligott.

October is Cyber Security month, a global event with the aim of raising awareness of cyber security threats, to promote cyber security among organisations and the general public, and to provide resources to protect themselves online, through education and sharing of good practices.  

In conversation with Rosie Coffey, Head of Enterprise Solutions, IT Services. 

As you will be coming back to the office more, now is the time to think of mobile working. Have a laptop and a desktop in your office? Then you can recycle/repurpose the desktop pc in your office and we will provide you with a *Free Laptop Dock and peripherals instead to use with your existing laptop.

Our Sustainable Future

Remote working tools have demonstrated in the pandemic that there can be an effective alternative to travelling and therefore can help us reduce our carbon footprint. In addition to this overall commitment to helping us live more sustainably, IT Services is also actively making the following contribution to continuing UCC’s progress on sustainability.

As part of the IT Services Mobility Strategy “Stay Mobile! Stay Flexible!” we have been enabling staff to work from anywhere on any device during the pandemic and we want to continue this flexibility while working on campus. We realise there are issues with the WiFi service in some locations, which prompted us to publish a WiFi survey to all staff with the primary goal of identifying areas on campus with poor WiFi coverage. We used the output of this survey to inform an investment in our WiFi infrastructure for the academic year 2021/22.

Tomas joined UCC in 1990 and in that time has transitioned from traditional photography, with film, chemicals/darkroom to a hybrid model of photography when film was scanned, to now a fully digital era using cameras and phones. The one thing that’s a constant in Tomas’s work, is the aim to produce quality imagery that reflects UCC, it’s students and staff. Everything Tomas produces documents UCC for posterity. 

In March 2020 new staff were going to be commencing employment in UCC in a new way due to the pandemic. New staff no longer had access to an onboarding meeting on their first day, they were not going to meet their manager and colleagues in person, and they were not going to be able to physically come to UCC.

A typical day is the life of IT Security Officer Barry Foley.

When Jerry Buckley started working in the then Computer Bureau in 1979, as a trainee Analyst/Programmer, the internet was still a decade away from being born; the Boole Library was being built on the site of the old Quarry, and UCC IT systems ran on one IBM mainframe that that had less power than today’s iPhone.

Status.ucc.ie is a new system that provides information on the availability of the main IT services and applications in UCC.

On the 14^th January 2020 Microsoft will end support for Windows 7

As part of our efforts to improve access to staff online services we are
introducing a new application launcher webpage.

IT Services is pleased to announce our new self-service password reset tool (SSPR) that will enable you to reset your @ucc.ie password anytime, anywhere and from any device.

On foot of the Presidents email, all staff have now moved to a remote working scenario, IT Services want to remind staff that they can still get IT Support in this situation.

Publish is a new, online tool which allows students to quickly and easily create their own personalised academic timetable.

In 2016/17 IT Services undertook a review of IT Policies.   Please familiarise yourself with these policies.  You will find a summary of each policy and a direct link to the policy content here: https://www.ucc.ie/en/it-policies/policies/it-policy/#policy  

New user friendly single logon for many UCC IT Services.  You can now use your UCC email address and password to logon to multiple services making it easier to use them.  You can use it for:-

As part of UCC's Green Campus, IT Services is dedicated to 'greening' its services. The below infographic demonstrates the many ways in which IT Services has achieved this so far.

On November 2, 2015 Google put up a Doodle to celebrate the Bicentenary of George Boole, forefather of the information age. The Doodle linked to the georgeboole.com site that is hosted by UCC.

 Several GDPR phishing scams have been reported to IT Services and detected in the past few days as scammers capitalise on the last-minute rush by companies to ensure compliance ahead of the May 25, 2018 GDPR deadline. Be wary about any GDPR related email requests – they may be a scam or phishing emails.

After 18 months, the design migration project has come to an end. Approximately 350 sites have passed through the process. 

Information Security is now a basic requirement for all businesses to ensure continued operation in a globally connected world.  The human element of Information Security is crucial in digital fraud detection.  The aim of this conference is to help grow awareness on the current risks of cyber fraud across the Cork business community. 

UCC Blackboard including Turnitin will be unavailable during a scheduled maintenance period from Saturday, January 6th, 2018 at 22:00 to Sunday 7th at 15:00 (GMT).

As you are no doubt aware, UCC has been targeted by a number of Phishing attacks in the recent past.  For this reason, we had to increase the detection thresholds this summer which resulted in some legitimate email being tagged as SPAM.  On Monday 17^th October, we are planning to implement a new solution for SPAM email.

During the bank holiday weekend, the Wi-Fi network experienced intermittent downtime.

We apologise for any inconvenience this interruption to the service may have caused.

The Wi-Fi network has now been restored.