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Passwords - oh passwords!

 We just recently sent this message to our staff:  Greetings! In our continuing efforts to create a more technology secure environment, we are going to begin to enforce the following rules for STAFF passwords in Google. All passwords must be a minimum length of 12 characters. We recommend passwords that are passphrases, for example “ilovechipsandsalsa”. While we are enforcing a password length requirement, at this time we are not requiring complexity through special characters, or symbols, or upper case letters. All staff will be required to create a new password every 180 days. We will begin enforcing these policies on Wednesday November 16th. When you log into your Google account, you will be prompted to update your password. A few other items regarding this change. Infinite Campus passwords will not be affected. Teacher MacBook logins, office staff’s windows logins, any business office/HR logins, or other website logins will not be affected. Para tablets, chromebooks, or ot...
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Campus update

  We get new updates to Infinite Campus every couple of weeks. One of the newest updates now checks your password against known data breaches. If you password is one that is compromised, you'll get a notification like this when signing into Campus:  In order to change your Campus password, you need to go to Account Settings in Campus Tools and select Edit your password. 
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Webfilter update

  Just this week we implemented a new webfilter. Many of you use GoGuardian's teacher classroom management system so you would be familiar with that platform. We are now also using their content filter to ensure CIPA compliance for our network, on student and staff devices. In part of this implementation, you may have noticed some times of certain sites that were allowed in the past getting blocked now, or vice versa.   We will be continuing to monitor the filter and if things pop up that you or students need access to please reach out. 
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Chrome update

 Greetings all! Google has just recently released a new update to it's browser that is addressing some security issues in past versions. Please take a moment to update your Chrome web browser on your school provided Mac or Windows machine. For those of you using a Chromebook or Tablet, updates are pushed out automatically...  How to update your Chrome Browser
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Personal Device and Personal Accounts

  We have received some recent guidance regarding personal cell phone use from Matt Carver, Legal Council for School Administrators of Iowa that we felt would be beneficial to pass along to you. LINK TO ARTICLE (NOTE ARTICLE IS ON PAGE 4). Please know that although this article is directed toward school administrators, it applies to ALL school employees .  One key point that I want to reiterate is this paragraph below:  "Does this mean that all communications between school employees or representatives are subject to public records requests? NO. Again, consider if the communication is about official business. If the communication does not relate to the employee or board member carrying out their official duties or making a decision about the school district, a student, or another employee, then it is unlikely the communication is subject to a request. Remember that public employees have constitutionally protected rights to speak on matters of public concern in their pe...
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Network updates

  Greetings Prairie Hawks, We’d like to notify you of some upcoming network security updates. Our department is continuing to update security practices and this upcoming change will be a major revision to our current system. Beginning Jan 3rd, 2022 we will be adding a 2nd wifi network (SSID). Currently, devices connect to the open wifi network ‘CCSD’. This new network will be for our staff and student devices only. Our end goal is to have a network specifically for school provided devices and a guest network. To that end we will not be broadcasting or providing credentials for our new production network. Rather, we will be deploying these credentials through our various device management systems.  What does this mean for you…. On and after January 3rd, the district owned and managed devices will be instructed to connect automatically to this new network. Beginning Jan 17th, (clerical day) we will be retiring the CCSD network and moving to a new CCSD-Guest network. This will be...
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Google Chrome Passwords

  Some of you may have received this email recently. We received quite a few phish hook notices that many of you were documinging this as phishing.  1. Thanks for continuing to use the phish hook for emails. That's notifying our tech team of things that arise, but also keeping your email safe.  2. This is a legitmate email, we're seeing this being sent to users who save their username and passwords in Chrome. By doing that, you're giving access to your  usernames and passwords to Google, who then checks those against compromised lists, hence the email you may have received.  You can follow the  prompt on the email to check your passwords, and then we would recommend chaning the passwords on those sites that are compromised. 
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