Ithaca College

Like any organization that deals with sensitive information, Ithaca College must be in compliance with a variety of security standards. To ensure this compliance, our security practices and policies are regularly reviewed by external auditors, and often result in recommended or mandated changes to our security practices. One such recommendation that the college as a whole has been asked to comply with is the enforcement of screen saver passwords on virtually all college-owned computers.

Going forward, the majority of college computers (with some exceptions noted below*) will automatically activate the screen saver after 15 minutes of inactivity, requiring the login (Netpass) password to be entered to resume use of the system. The new screen saver policy will begin to be implemented on Macs beginning on Monday, April 20th (the policy was implemented for Windows computers in May 2014).

Please note that not all Mac users will see this change immediately, since the new policy is related to the ongoing implementation of the Casper Mac Management Suite. See this Intercom for related information: Casper Announcement

The purpose of the policy is to ensure that users’ systems are not subject to unauthorized access when left unattended for long periods of time while logged into any one of our many systems that store sensitive information. While the college recognizes that all security measures pose some level of inconvenience, a screen saver password is far less inconvenient than the alternative of requiring each of our applications (Homer, Parnassus, Email, Sakai, etc.) to have their own 15-minute inactivity timeout.

*Exceptions to the screen saver password policy:

• Computers that “auto login” (such as in many labs and eClassrooms)
• Computers that never connect to the main campus network (study centers such as London and Los Angeles, for example) 

ITS Helpdesk
helpdesk@ithaca.edu
104 Job Hall
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