News

IT Update

Mar 13, 2017

Posted in: IT

By Gareth Griffiths

IT Support System
In January 2017, 71 new Work Orders were received into Track-IT. Of these, 65 are now closed (91% completion rate). Overall, we closed 83 Work Orders in the month. There are currently 44 open Work Orders.

Please contact support@gdins.org for any IT-related requests. If it is not possible to send an email, you may call any member of the IT Team, who will log the support Work Order for you.

Website
Overall, there were 36,726 Page Views over 10,976 sessions in January 2017. About 51 percent of these were new visitors. The three most visited pages were homepage, What We Offer, and Work With Us.

Social Media
The Institute social media stats for January were as follows.
Facebook: Total number of people liking the page grew by 1,624 to 3,729. Total engagements (number of links clicked, likes, and comments) was 4,789. The total reach of posts (number of people who saw a post in their feed) was 246,853 with 290,369 impressions (number of times a GDI page appeared in others’ news feeds). The most popular post was the “If you’re interested in some of GDI’s History, check out this article…” reaching 7,493 people with 411 post clicks and 1,944 likes, comments and shares.

These figures are fantastic, and could be attributed to the DirectWest Facebook advertising campaign we decided upon for the month. The goal of the campaign was using an advert to drive up likes to the page. The numbers show that it was very successful.

Twitter: 53 tweets earned 22,600 impressions. There were 31 new followers in the month, 45 mentions and 703 Profile visits. The top tweet was “Congrats @umanitoba as 6 graduates appointed to Order of Canada,” earning 3,127 impressions. Top mention was “Inner city Saskatoon coolness: I hear there is space in the Indigenous writers workshop” by Erica Violet Lee with 44 engagements. Top media tweet was “@gdins_org GDI Aboriginal Apprenticeship Update…” with 1,048 impressions. We currently have 1,022 followers.

Phishing/Virus
Please be vigilant on all emails received. Always be wary of emails asking for account or password information (phishing attacks). The most recent reported one is from the RCMP saying you have a speeding ticket and to click the attached link. The RCMP has confirmed they will not issue any violation notice by email and to delete it.

To identify a phishing email, please look at the From email address. Usually, it has no reference to the organization it purports to be from. For example, if the address was rbc.support@hotmail.com.co. and it really was from RBC, the chances are the email would be .@rbc.com or ..@rbc.ca. If there is a link in the email, hover over it, and look at the address it is sending you to. Again this usually bears no relation to the company it claims to represent.

If an email looks suspicious, do not follow any of the links or reply to it. The safest option is to delete it. You are always welcome to contact IT for advice on how to deal with such emails. Just to reinforce this. No reputable company will ask for confidential information such as passwords by email.

Mail system enhancement
We have taken steps to protect ourselves from our addresses being used in phishing emails. We added a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record for our email domains. SPF is a system where you specify the mail servers that are allowed to send from your mail domains. Any other emails received from outside of these domains will be rejected.

CDMA Wireless Network
Currently, SaskTel is supporting older devices on the CDMA network. However, other providers have already started discontinuing these; so travelling with them will become harder. On July 5, 2017 SaskTel will turn off the CDMA frequencies, meaning all devices on this network will cease to function. Examples include older flip phones (Samsung, LG, etc.), Blackberry World Edition and Blackberry Curve.

Most of our phones will already have been upgraded to a 4G or LTE device, and so will be unaffected. If you are unsure if your device will be affected by this, please contact IT and we can advise.

Closing Thought
The nature of life is such that if you tell your boss you were late because your car broke down, the next day your car will break down.

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