eVision (including Student Self Service and Graduate Applicant Self Service) and SITS:Vision will be considered "at risk" on the weekend of on Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March while essential maintenance takes place. "At risk" in this context means that no interruption to service is expected but the service is operating at reduced resilience. If you do encounter any problems outside of this window please contact the Student Systems Support Centre.
We’d like to make you aware of changes that are being implemented to SITS:Vision user accounts, specifically around password criteria and management.
Background
Following recommendations by external auditors and OxCERT we need to make improvements to the current management of SITS:Vision accounts in order to improve security and bring it more in line with current GDPR and IT standards. Over the past few months Student Systems have been developing new rules around password management which have already been applied to SITS:Vision accounts in non-production environments.
Password criteria changes
The new criteria for password management has been established and will be applied to all SITS:Vision user accounts in the SITS LIVE environment which consists of the following:
- A password will need to be a minimum of 16 characters long
- A password will now be case-sensitive.
- Password history for the previous 5 passwords will be kept.
- Passwords will expire 1 year after being changed with on screen warnings prior to expiry.
Changing your password
From Tuesday 19th March, an expiry date will be set against passwords for all active SITS:Vision LIVE user accounts in a rolling update so not everyone’s password expires at the same time. A week before your password is due to expire you will start to see an expiry notification when logging into SITS:Vision.
To change your password simply navigate to the PWD screen in SITS:Vision and set yourself a new password following the criteria stated above. If your password has already expired and it is within a week of the expiry date you will still be able to login but the system will prompt you to change your password immediately. If it is more than a week since expiry you will receive an ‘Invalid Login’ message and will need to ask SSSC to provide you with a temporary password.
If you wish, you can change your password before being prompted to do so. We would particularly recommend this if you don’t access SITS:Vision very frequently.
Further support and documentation
For further information please visit the SITS:Vision User Guides page of the Student Systems website where the document ‘How to access SITS:Vision’ contains more detailed information with screenshots.
If you have any enquiries regarding the email above or password expiry please contact the Student Systems Support Centre.
We’d like to make you aware of changes that are being implemented that will change how SITS:Vision users access and use the Oracle SQL Developer tool within Connect Remote Apps.
Background
The Oracle SQL Developer tool is currently provided to a limited number of SITS:Vision users within Connect Remote Apps in order to run reports and queries against SITS databases. We need to make improvements to the way SQL accounts are managed which are in line with recommendations made by both OxCERT and the university’s external auditors. For the last few months, members of IT Services and Student Systems have been working on configuring a method to provide users with individual user accounts.
New user account setup
From Monday 18th March, all users will begin to be assigned their own user account to access SQL Developer. These new accounts will be setup in stages, starting with the majority of user who access SITS LIVE data using read_only level of access. Users will be sent an automated email from the Oracle server with login credentials, a temporary password and advice on password rules for re-setting your password. From there, you can access SQL Developer as you usually do, setup a connection and change your password.
Once all users have been provided with their accounts, the old Oracle accounts and connections will be removed from the system and, going forward, the only way to access to data via SQL Developer will be via your own user account.
Further support and documentation
All users will receive a separate email from the Student Systems Support Centre prior to your account being created with more specific details on how to setup your new account. In addition, please visit the SITS:Vision User Guides page of the Student Systems website where the document ‘How to access SQL Developer’ contains more detailed information with screenshots.
If you have any enquiries regarding the creation of the accounts or any issues setting up your account please contact the Student Systems Support Centre.
eVision (including College Records and Graduate Supervision Reporting) Student Self Service, Graduate Applicant Self Service and SITS:Vision will be unavailable on Tuesday 12th March from 7am to 9am in order to apply an additional Oracle database patch to fix a defect. The systems will then be considered "at risk" until 12pm midday. "At risk" in this context means no further interruption to service is expected but the systems will be closely monitored.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused. If you encounter any issues outside of these times please contact the Student Systems Support Centre.
The Service Report for February 2024 is now available on the Support Statistics page.