[Macpartners] MIT Personal Certificate renewal time and Web Browser Recommendations for FY 2012

[Deb Bowser]

Date:   June 22, 2011
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 2012
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Good morning:

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 starting on July 31st, 2011.

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

     <https://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 following page : <http://ist.mit.edu/services/certificates/guide>.

When people visit <https://ca.mit.edu/> from a Macintosh running Safari under OS X 10.5 or 10.6, or Windows 7, Vista or XP running Internet Explorer, 7 or 8, they will be offered a link to download CertAid.  Alternatively, certificates can be manually obtained.

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://ist.mit.edu/services/certificates/delete>.

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://kb.mit.edu/confluence/x/GgTn>.

For Windows, Internet Explorer and Firefox are the recommended and supported web browsers for the upcoming fiscal year.
  Windows 7, Vista Enterprise and Windows XP SP3: IE8 or Firefox 3.6
          It is recommended that 64-bit machines run the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer.

For Macintosh, Safari and Firefox are the recommended and supported web browsers for the upcoming fiscal year.
         MacOS X 10.6.x:           Safari 5 or later or Firefox 3.6 or later
         MacOS X 10.5.x:           Safari 4 or later or Firefox 3.6 or later

For Linux, Firefox is the recommended and supported web browser for the upcoming fiscal year. To ensure you have the latest version of Firefox, please consult your operating system's documentation for performing a security update.  (Athena workstations will normally receive these updates automatically).

For Mobile devices:
            iOS 4.0 or later (on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), Safari is the recommended and supported web browser for the upcoming fiscal year.
            Windows 6 and Internet Explorer is the recommended and supported web browser for the upcoming fiscal year.

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://ist.mit.edu/services/certificates>.

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 send email to the IS&T Help Desk, <helpdesk at mit.edu> or call them at 617-253-1101.

Cordially,
Deb Bowser
IS&T
Operations & Infrastructure
W92-189



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