UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — To increase cybersecurity measures at Penn State and ensure the reliability of the University’s network, a project to migrate the University’s many distributed firewall systems to a “next generation” enterprise firewall platform has begun. As an initial part of that project, Penn State IT will be installing the new firewall platform in front of Penn State’s wireless service on Jan. 4, 2018. This change should be transparent and have no impact to Penn State wireless users. However, applications that don’t adhere to the new firewall rulesets based on Administrative Policy AD95 may be blocked. A ruleset specifies what services are let through the firewall, and which ones are kept out.
Like traditional firewalls, next generation firewalls guard against intrusion but also perform additional filtering and antivirus duties to combat all levels of malicious activity on a computer network. Although firewalls help prevent malicious activity on a computer network, all students, faculty and staff members should continue to use antivirus software and set up automatic updates to be protected from the latest threats.
For wireless connectivity problems at University Park residence halls, contact ResCom help desk.
For wireless connectivity problems at University Park, contact the IT Service Desk.
For wireless connectivity problems at other campus locations, contact the local computer support office or help desk.
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