Page 17 - 2020 OIT Progress Report

ENHANCING SMU’S WEB PRESENCE
You may have noticed changes to the look and feel of the SMU website. These changes are the result of hundreds of hours of effort to transition SMU web pages to a newer, simpler design template that provides a better experience for visitors, as well as easier design and editing for web developers and content editors.
Our web applications team worked closely with schools and departments across campu,s along with multiple marketing agencies, to implement these new templates in ways that placed content first, creating engaging sites that inform and inspire action. These improvements also lay the foundation for future abilities like tailoring each page to each visitor based upon location and demographic, and even greater compatibility with all mobile platforms.
IMPROVING BUSINESS PROCESSES AND SERVICES
To enhance the student experience, we partnered with Student Affairs to implement a fully online orientation. We made possible functionality within my.SMU for students to declare their minor. We introduced online academic advising notes to several areas, which enabled academic advisors to easily add important notes to a student’s record consistently and in a way that is archived and easily accessible throughout a student’s career. This new system will be gradually deployed to all advisors to further standardize how notes are created and stored.
To further protect our data and systems, the use of Duo Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) was expanded to include VPN, Apps.SMU, the Canvas Learning Management System, and library systems. Since Duo 2FA was introduced at SMU in 2016, account compromises by password exploitations have measurably declined, making sensitive student, employee, business, and research information safer than ever. Other security measures such as a new web application firewall and email phishing detection tools were also deployed.
Several existing services received significant attention this year. AdminImages, our primary document management platform, was upgraded to the latest version of Perceptive Content software, which enables increased functionality
15