Students

Data is the most important aspect of your computer. Computer hardware can fail, data can be corrupted, computers can be lost, stolen, or destroyed. You may be able to reinstall operating systems and applications, but your original data could be lost forever. Data backup software can help you protect and restore your data when something goes wrong. IS&T provides two service offerings at no charge to students, faculty, and staff for data backup:

• Desktops and laptops: CrashPlan PROe
• Enterprise servers: Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM)

MIT provides centrally-managed printers as well as network connectivity for department or personally owned printers. Both color and black-and-white printers are now available in all MIT dorms.

Data discovery is the activity of finding where sensitive data resides so that it can be adequately protected or securely removed. IS&T distributes Spirion (formerly Identity Finder), a software tool that can easily retrieve electronic data stored on computers and servers.

MIT's LDAP Directory Service (ldap.mit.edu) is MIT's implementation of the standard LDAP protocol for providing directory services. It provides access to user and group membership information sourced from Moira and updated in real time, allowing application developers or administrators looking to integrate their applications with MIT's enterprise data.

As an example, wikis.mit.edu (based on Atlassian Confluence) makes use of the LDAP service for user lookups.

MIT Touchstone is a single sign-on web authentication service that allows members of the MIT community to log in to participating MIT and federated websites using their MIT credentials. When using a Touchstone-enabled application, your credentials will never be passed to the application service.