Office of Information Technology and Learning Experience

Welcome to Spring 2022!

The Learning Commons is excited to serve students in Spring 2022! As in Fall 2021, the Learning Commons will offer services both onsite and online. Generally, the physical Learning Commons spaces are open Monday-Thursday from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM. All services will operate remotely on Fridays.

• Tutoring will offer onsite tutoring in high-needs subjects at all locations. Onsite tutoring may depend on tutor availability and is currently limited to students who are taking on-campus classes. Remote tutoring remains available for all students, both by appointment and via drop-in. HACC’s Online Writing Lab (HOWL) offers asynchronous writing tutoring to all students 7 days a week with a typical return time of 24 hours. Smarthinking is available for 24/7 tutoring. In-class tutors are also available in select courses. Please visit the tutoring page for more information.

• Testing is offering limited on-campus testing, with a special focus on make-up exams for on-campus classes, students who require testing accommodations, and certain specialized exams. Remote proctoring through Proctorio and Examity remain available for all students. More information about testing can be found here.

• The Libraries at HACC will be open according to the Learning Commons general schedule, making physical resources such as books and other media available for check out. Study rooms are also available for reservations. Library Faculty will continue to offer select classes on campus and research appointments for projects. Library staff is also available via chat to offer assistance to students. Please visit the Library page to learn more.

• User Support will be available for on-campus technology assistance in addition to their remote support. Students, faculty, and staff can receive support 24/7 via email and phone call, but chat support is also offered Monday-Friday from 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM. They offer instructional guides on important pieces of software and technical processes. To learn more about User Support resources, please visit their page here.

• The Learning Commons Technology Access and Loan Program is also accepting eligibility forms. Students who are enrolled in at least 6 credit hours may be eligible for technology loans that include laptops, hotspots, and calculators. 

• In addition to the main Learning Commons spaces, we also offer four external computer labs, listed below. These labs can be used by students who need to print on campus. Please note that students must call Security in order to enter the labs.

  • • Harrisburg

      • Computer Lab: Whitaker 221

      • Security: 717-780-2568

    • Gettysburg

      • Computer Lab: 120A

      • Security: 717-339-3528

    • Lancaster

      • Computer Lab: Main 302

      • Security: 717-358-2999

    • York

      • Computer Lab: Leader 131

      • Security: 717-801-3268 

To learn more about all the Learning Commons has to offer, please visit our website. For the most up-to-date information about Learning Commons services, please visit our updates page. 

Cybersecurity Challenges/Ransomware Drive System improvements at HACC

Over the last several months there have been a number of developments swirling throughout the country regarding the increase in cybersecurity attacks on our critical infrastructure and systems… in particular…. Ransomware. Security teams all over the world are rushing to deal with a new critical vulnerability called log4jshell.The Log4j vulnerability has the potential to enable threat actors (Hackers) to compromise systems at scale. The IT team over the holidays began to scan our perimeter networks to identify and prioritize issues requiring immediate focus, and tim proved a crucial initial step to solving this very significant problem. Our team worked overtime to review available alerts from any existing security products, most of which had already begun to implement rules to help identify log4j exposures and minimize our impact.

What you Should know?

• The Log4Shell vulnerability is rather easy to exploit

• Threat actors are actively compromising systems as we speak.

• There is a patch available and also a myriad of quick fixes and remediations.

• We have identified assets that use the Log4j library and are patching them immediately.

As these situations occur, corporate, government, and higher educational institutions are quickly scrambling to establish best practices associated with how best to mitigate these types of threats.  In short, we quickly realized that we must implement additional practices to strengthen our ability to protect our critical systems and sensitive information from digital attacks. Having said the above, the following strategies will continue to assist us in our quest to maintain system security and availability at HACC and will help prevent attacks like Ransomware from occurring within our system.

1. Prevent Email forwarding (Forwarding greatly increases the chances that your email will be seen as spam and arrive in the junk box, or worse yet, server-level spam filters can simply eliminate the message without your or the sender's knowledge.)

2. Implement Multi-Factor Authentication (Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is used to ensure that digital users are who they say they are by requiring that they provide at least two pieces of evidence to prove their identity.)

3. Complete Google Storage Pools (Google Workspace uses a storage model called pooled storage that's shared by all the users in your organization.)

These are just a few strategies that when properly implemented, can further reduce the potential threats associated with Ransomware and Cybersecurity issues in today’s interconnected world. We will be discussing and implementing these strategies over the next couple of weeks in an effort to keep HACC safe from outsiders, and to protect out resources, data, and our students.