[Macpartners] MIT personal certificates - Time to Renew

[Deb Bowser]

Date:   June 10, 2009

To:     Members of the MIT Community

From:   Information Services and Technology (IS&T)

Subj:  MIT personal certificate renewal time and Web Browser Recommendations for FY 2010

--------------------

As many colleagues experience at this time of year, MIT's personal Web certificates will soon require renewal.  Certificates obtained in the past year are set to expire on July 31st, 2009.

Renewal of personal Web certificates is not automatic.  To ensure continued access to MIT's secure Web applications, such as, Benefits, SAPweb, WebSIS, etc., plan to renew in the coming weeks.  You can acquire your own new personal certificates now at:

      <http://ca.mit.edu/>

In preparation for this renewal cycle, Information Services and Technology, (IS&T), and colleagues who maintain and support websites across MIT have developed the following browser recommendations.  These browser recommendations help simplify IT support and provide a consistent set of standards for MIT web site maintainers.  Web site providers can use these standards to ensure delivery of quality web services to our community.    It is important that the web browser version be current with the operating system and all critical web browser patches be current.

For instructions on how to install certificates, please see the Installing Certificates at MIT page:
        http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/certificates/guide.html#install

NOTE: If after installing your new certificate, you continue to experience problems accessing certificate-protected sites, you may want to try deleting your expired certificates, as documented here:  http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/certificates/delete.html.   Do not delete an expired certificate if you have used it to sign or receive encrypted email.  For more information on what to do in that case, please see: http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/certificates/export.html.

On Windows, Internet Explorer and Firefox are the supported web browsers for the upcoming fiscal year.
          Vista Enterprise: IE 7 or Firefox 3.0.10
          Windows XP SP2 or higher:  IE 7 or Firefox 3.0.10
          It is recommended that 64-bit machines run the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer.
IS&T does not support IE8 and recommends users wait to install:  http://web.mit.edu/ist/news/headlines/ie8wait.html

On Macintosh, Safari and Firefox are the supported web browsers for the upcoming fiscal year.
         MacOS X 10.4.11:                            Safari 3.2.3 or Firefox 3.0.10
         MacOS X 10.5.6 or higher:             Safari 3.2.1 or Firefox 3.0.10
Safari users running Mac OS X 10.5.4 or higher need to run the CertAid 1.0.2 tool:  http://web.mit.edu/swrt/certaid.html

On Linux, Firefox is the supported web browser for the upcoming fiscal year.
       Linux RHEL 4.6 and earlier and RHEL 5.1 and earlier:     Firefox 1.5.0.x
       Linux RHEL 4.7 and later and RHEL 5.2 and later:            Firefox 3.0.x
       The RedHat Linux update service provides security updates to these web browsers.

On Athena Solaris or Linux, Firefox is the supported web browser for the upcoming fiscal year.
            Athena on Linux:            Firefox 3.0.x
            Athena on Solaris 10:    Firefox 3.0.x
            Security updates provided by Athena update.

On Mobile devices:
            iPhone OS 2.0 or later, Safari is the supported web browser for the upcoming fiscal year.
            Windows Mobile 6, Internet Explorer is the supported web browser for the upcoming fiscal year.
<http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/pda/support.html#certificates>

As a reminder, if you use certificates on multiple machines, you will need to get a new certificate for each browser on each machine.  Please encourage those you work with to renew as well.  More complete information and documentation is available at:
 <http://web.mit.edu/ist/help/cert/>.

We hope that providing this information and these recommendations now will allow our colleagues to plan accordingly.  We remain confident that these web browser recommendations will be effective for the upcoming year and lessen the burden on software release efforts and desktop maintenance.  Please feel free to share this announcement with colleagues who may be interested and should you have any pressing questions or concerns, please contact the Computing Help Desk at: <computing-help at mit.edu>.

Regards,

Deb Bowser
Email and Calendaring Project Manager
IS&T, Client Support Services
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
N42-250k
617-253-3879
bowser at mit.edu
---------------------
Important:  IS&T staff will *NEVER* ask you for your password, nor will MIT send you email requesting your password information. Please continue to ignore any email messages that claim to require you to provide such information.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/macpartners/attachments/20090610/a677ad84/attachment.htm