Bits & Bytes

Women at work

August is synonymous with Women's Day, a day highlighting not only the events of 1956 when 20,000 women marched to the Union Buildings to petition against the country's pass laws, but also the lack of women's rights across the world. There are 104 countries where certain jobs are off-limits for women; 113 do not have laws to ensure equal pay for equal work among men and women and in the US, a first-world country, women are not paid during maternity leave. In South Africa the femicide rate is 5 times higher than the global average with a woman murdered every three hours.

According to an article published earlier this year women are still underrepresented and underpaid in the tech industry. At IT we are working towards expanding our female staff, especially in traditionally male-dominated positions, such as technicians. With the odds of 31% to 69% we're not quite there yet, but we're slowly moving in the right direction.

IHowever you choose to spend you Women's Day on Monday, may it be an empowering and relaxing one.

	Enrol for MFA before 14 August Information Technology recently enabled MFA for our staff and students. From mid-August all staff and students will be required to use multi factor authentication to secure their information and the university network.

	Is Zoom safe to use? Back in May we advised against using Zoom for official university matters. The reason for this decision was the severe lack in security on the Zoom platform and the subsequent multiple public security breaches which were experienced in many high profile meetings.

	Sending emails to large groups Occasionally it is necessary to send emails to external students or other large groups of people who are not part of the sun domain. If you are currently using Outlook distribution lists we recommend that you switch to the Sympa mailing list management platform.

	Microsoft Teams empowering students and staff to study and work from home In response to COVID-19 Information Technology immediately started preparing emergency remote online learning technology contingency - as well as work from home plans, to prepare for off-campus operations.

	Online exams during lock down An extraordinary effort was made in a short time by, amongst others, IT, CLT, Scheduling Office and blended leaning coordinators into ensuring that the mid-year exams could proceed despite lock down, switching from mostly paper based to fully online.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), also called Two-Step Authentication, is the best and easiest way for organisations to create an extra layer of security, protecting sensitive data from hackers. In this video Miles Technologies discusses the importance of MFA and why every organization should be using it.



	Hardware support during lockdown

	Online Excel training

	Closing of student quotas

	Facilities Management will no longer support their FM mobile app and it has been removed from app stores. The division will instead focus on their campus map strategy.


Giant balloons bringing internet to Africa

Tools for researchers working in collaboration



SUNLearn resources

Technical guide for assessments on SUNLearn

Guidance for student online learning



Teams: useful links

How to use Outlook's Report Message add-in

Unsubscribe from Cortana notifications

Changing password at home (pdf document)

How to spot mis- and disinformation

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are strictly those of the page author(s) and content contributor(s). The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Stellenbosch University. Information Technology does not endorse any of the services or products discussed in this newsletter.