Category: Press Release

The Dallas Business Journal recently published the rankings for COVID-related instructional readiness for Texas colleges and universities as ranked by the non-profit Educate to Career. This year, these national rankings indicate how robust the software and systems for distance learning are at each higher-education institution. Two of the Tier 1-ranked Texas institutions, Texas A&M University – Commerce and Texas Woman’s University, are Columbia Advisory Group IT service customers.

Six North Texas universities scored in the highest tier and two in the lowest tier on a ranking of how adaptable they are to life and learning during the COVID-19 crisis.

Educate to Career, a California-based education nonprofit, ranked four-year schools into tiers based on factors including in-classroom instruction, quality and experience with online learning and other factors.

To be in Tier 1, the highest group, schools had to be able to deliver their full curricula online and in-classroom and have a minimum of three years of experience in delivering online curricula. Educate to Career also weighed each school’s tuition and fees.

The North Texas schools in Tier 1 were University of North Texas in Denton, Texas Woman’s University in Denton, the University of Texas at Arlington, Dallas Baptist University, Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, and Texas A&M University-Commerce.

Other Tier 1 requirements include a physical campus for in-classroom instruction should health authorities allow colleges to open in September, robust software and systems to support distance learning programs, faculty experience in teaching online and reasonable tuitions and fees on a relative basis, according to the rankings.

Tier 2 universities have the systems required to deliver curriculum online and in-classroom. However, college faculty have less experience in delivering online curriculum than Tier 1 colleges.

In North Texas, Southern Methodist University and the University of Texas at Dallas (in Richardson) ranked in the second tier, according to Educate to Career.

No North Texas universities ranked in Tier 3, which is described as universities and colleges that “strongly emphasize in-classroom education over online teaching, and may not offer full curriculum online.”

Two North Texas schools ranked in Tier 4, described as colleges and universities that have “limited systems and experience in delivering online curriculum.”

Those were Texas Christian University and the University of Dallas in Irving.

Spokespeople for those two universities did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment about the rankings.

Improving Student Services and Recruitment through Enhanced ERP, SIS and CRM Integration

As higher education institutions strive to maximize actionable insights and student services across existing data pools, the need for complex data integrations continues to grow. When multiple campuses collaborate with curriculum and enrollment processes, the need for systems integration becomes even more critical.

As an IT provider to educational institutions across the country, our Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Student Information System (SIS) teams are seeing increased interest in strategic enrollment partnerships, especially within college and university systems and community college districts. These partnerships require data clearinghouses to allow shared entities to recruit, enroll, receive tuition payments, advise students, and view student grades and course schedules at a central location for access by multiple higher education institutions, and despite variations in the software used at each member institution.

An excellent recent example is the RELLIS campus of the Texas A&M University System. The campus was created to feature high-tech, high-impact research facilities for technology development, testing and commercialization. The campus also features a collaborative education complex which offers multiple academic degrees from many universities within the A&M System as well as from Blinn College campuses, and offers opportunities for workforce skills training to the surrounding communities. CAG’s ERP specialist team was engaged to create a recruiting and candidate tracking system along with a complex data clearinghouse to facilitate enrollment and tuition payments across 10 colleges and universities.

“CAG’s team of IT experts are accustomed to the aggressive timelines and rigorous and evolving demands that an innovative project of this type will naturally entail. Their higher-ed focused IT services team will enable us to move quickly to provide integrated service to both our students and our member campuses,” said Mark Stone, Chief Information Officer for the Texas A&M University System.

In cooperation with leaders from each campus, the CAG team created data feeds from each institution that aggregate in Salesforce to allow students to take courses from any of their universities. The Salesforce CRM front-end allows RELLIS recruiting and marketing staff to drive student enrollment while back-end data feeds are unique to each institution due to disparate Student Information Systems at each university. This allows advisors to manage data from these universities and enter advisory notes that are pushed back to the system of record for each student. To achieve student authentication, CAG also integrated “single sign-on” for the institutions.

It was important to the Texas A&M University System to improve student service by simplifying the tuition payment process. The data solution CAG created allows payments to be made to the central location at RELLIS, and agreed revenue splits are subsequently sent to each institution. The clearinghouse gives students a single system login to view their course schedules and grades, thereby creating a seamless student experience.

For more information or a consultation on your data integration projects, please contact info@columbiaadvisory.com.

Cyber Criminals Conducting Successful Spearphishing Campaigns Against Students at Multiple College and Universities

Tips to share with students

By David Maxwell, Chief Information Security Officer & Director of the Information Security Practice at Columbia Advisory Group

The FBI has identified successful spearphishing campaigns directed at college and university students, especially during periods when financial aid funds are disbursed in large volumes. The Department of Education identified a similar spearphishing campaign targeting multiple Universities. In this attack, the cybercriminals sent spearphishing emails requesting students’ login credentials for the University. The email invited them to view and confirm their updated billing statement by logging into the school’s student portal. After gaining access, cybercriminals changed the students’ direct deposit destinations to bank accounts.

Protecting Yourself

For a phishing attack to work, the bad guys need to trick you into doing something. Fortunately, there are clues that a message is an attack. Here are the most common ones:

• It is becoming much easier for cybercriminals today to find or purchase personal information so expect more personalized scams.
• The email creates a sense of urgency, demanding “immediate action” before something bad happens, like closing your account. The attacker wants to rush you into making a mistake without thinking.
• You receive an email with an attachment that you were not expecting or the email entices you to open the attachment. Examples include an email saying it has an attachment with details of Financial Aid or a letter from the IRS saying you are being prosecuted.
• The email requests highly sensitive information, such as your credit card number or password.
• The email says it comes from an official organization or uses a personal email address like @gmail.com, @yahoo.com or @hotmail.com.
• The link looks odd or not official. One tip is to hover your mouse cursor over the link until a pop-up shows you where that link really takes you. If the link in the email doesn’t match the pop-up destination, don’t click it. On mobile devices, holding down your finger on a link gets the same pop-up.
• You receive a message from someone you know, but the tone or wording just does not sound like him or her. If you are suspicious, call the sender to verify they sent it. It is easy for a cyber attacker to create an email that appears to be from a friend or coworker.

If you believe an email or message is a phishing attack, simply delete it or send it as an attachment to Email@Domain.edu. Ultimately, common sense is your best defense.

Do you need help managing cybersecurity at your educational institution? Contact one of our experts about cybersecurity assessments and fractional ISO services. 

In conversation with Steve Erwin: Trends and Challenges for IT security in education
Our own Steve Erwin, Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer talks about present day trends and challenges for IT security in Education with E&I Cooperative Services. Click here for detailed interview.

Read More: https://www.eandi.org/resources/ei-blog/supplier-spotlight-columbia-advisory-group/

DALLAS, Oct. 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Effective September 21, 2018, Columbia Advisory Group (CAG) was certified for delivery of IT services under International Organization for Standardization

ISO 9001 is the international standard that specifies requirements for a quality management system (QMS). Organizations apply the standard to demonstrate their ability to consistently provide products and services that meet customer and regulatory requirements. It is the most popular standard in the ISO 9000 series and the only standard in the series to which organizations can certify.

“We are pleased to have achieved this certification to ISO 9001:2015 and believe it speaks to the culture of ‘Continuous Improvement’ here at CAG,” states CAG Quality, Risk and Compliance Director Lori DeMello. “We are focused on exceeding our customer’s expectations in all areas and this certification speaks to that ongoing commitment.”

CAG Chief Technology Officer Steve Erwin explains what the certification will do for CAG and its customers: “ISO standards and processes make it easier to share technological advances and good management practices as well as to disseminate innovation. The widespread adoption of International Standards means that we can develop and offer services meeting specifications that have broad international acceptance in their sectors, allowing us to supply customers in many markets around the world.”

About ISO 9001:2015

ISO 9001 was first published in 1987 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), an international agency composed of the national standards bodies of more than 160 countries. The current version of ISO 9001 was released in September 2015.

About Columbia Advisory Group

Columbia Advisory Group (CAG) is a highly experienced Information Technology (IT) consulting firm. With 100+ years of combined technology experience and business acumen, CAG’s team has assessed and helped improve the performance of more than 300 technology organizations and IT departments. By focusing on simple, meaningful and practical solutions combined with straight-forward analysis and recommendations, CAG’s team has experience in many regulatory and economic environments with companies and organizations of all sizes. CAG not only offers a deep understanding of IT, but its solutions are software and hardware agnostic. Whether a client is high growth or economically challenged, CAG can adapt to the complexities and nuances of that business. Based in Dallas, Texas, CAG works extensively with clients throughout the U.S. For more information, visit www.columbiaadvisory.com