NetID Binge, NetID Purge
OIT cleans up NetID addresses for former Duke affiliates
Friday, May 2, 2008
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Durham, NC -- OIT has cleaned up about 15,000 NetIDs that had no corresponding Duke affiliations. NetIDs and associated passwords grant Duke faculty, staff and students access to the Duke network, applications and other resources. “Affiliation” is one of the fields that is supposed to be filled out on a NetID application. When someone loses a Duke affiliation – for example, when a staff member leaves Duke or a student graduates – he or she is supposed to lose the ability to login to the Duke network. It didn’t always happen, however, since changes were made manually and were subject to human error. The process has now been automated and tied into Duke databases.
The cleanup began after the Duke University internal audit in fall 2007, according to Klara Jelinkova, senior director of OIT's Shared Services and Infrastructure. Old NetID accounts can pose a security risk, as people with no affiliation with Duke could possibly gain access to the Duke network.
There are essentially four groups of unaffiliated NetID holders: a few emeriti; about 3,000 people with pending passwords who never finished setting up their accounts; a few people with no associated email address and who have not been using their NetIDs; and the largest category, “everybody else.”
Unaffiliated accounts aren’t deleted; they’re deactivated – meaning they can be reactivated if a person resumes an affiliation with Duke. This also protects against someone obtaining a NetID with the same name as a previous holder and perhaps inadvertently gaining access to parts of the Duke network granted to the previous owner.
OIT has been careful about not deactivating accounts of people who might still be affiliated with Duke. It contacted unaffiliated account holders to determine their status. However, anyone encountering a problem accessing his or her NetID can contact the Help Desk at (919) 684-2200 or e-mail: help@oit.duke.edu.
As part of a new preventive maintenance procedure, Duke OIT is instituting an annual audit and cleanup of unaffiliated NetIDs. With the new automated system, there will be fewer of them.
