Emergency BIONIC Security Patching TODAY (8/19) Starting at 12pm

LITS will be performing emergency security patching on BIONC and payhistory.brynmawr.edu today (8/19) between 12pm-2pm. Due to the nature of the patches, they work will be done in two waves:
    • 12pm – 1pm:  All components of and services tied to BiONiC, account provisioning, visitor account creation, and password resets will be unavailable.
    • 1pm – 2pm: payhistory.brynmawr.edu will be unavailable

We appreciate your patience while this maintenance is being completed and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Normal access will be restored as soon as the work is finished. Please contact the Help Desk with any questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440

Website Events & Announcements confirmation emails temporarily unavailable

We are currently experiencing an issue with the website that is preventing confirmation emails from being sent for Events and Announcements submissions. To avoid confusion while we investigate the issue with our new web hosting provider, we have temporarily disabled confirmation emails.

Please be assured that Events and Announcements submissions are still being received and processed correctly for publication on the website and inclusion in the Daily Digest. The issue only affects the automated confirmation emails sent after a submission is made.

You may continue submitting Events and Announcements as usual. We are actively working to resolve the issue and will update this post once confirmation emails have been restored.

Thank you for your patience.

Action Required: Drupal editing unavailable Monday 8/3 at 9AM – Tuesday 8/4 at 5PM

As part of a planned update to the College website, Drupal editing will be unavailable beginning Monday at 9:00 a.m.

Drupal users will not be able to log in or make changes to the website until approximately Tuesday at 5:00 p.m. while Web Services completes our migration to a new web hosting provider and verifies that everything is working as expected.

Please save any work in progress and log out of Drupal before 9:00 a.m. on Monday.

If you have any questions or experience any issues after the migration, please contact Web Services at help@brynmawr.edu.

Carpenter Library Closed 5pm 7/30 through 7/31

Due to maintenance work on pipes in OL and the lack of AC, please be aware that Carpenter Library will close at 5pm on Thursday, July 30 and remain closed through Friday, July 31. We will open with our regular Sunday hours 12-5pm.

If there are items you need from Carpenter on during this closure, please request them through Tripod or ask for assistance at the circulation desk in Canaday or Collier Library. We will make these available in Canaday.

Emergency BIONIC Security Patching TODAY (7/22), 12pm – 1pm

LITS will be performing emergency security patching on PeopleSoft today (7/22) between 12pm-1pm. During this time, all components of and services tied to BiONiC, payhistory.brynmawr.edu, account provisioning, visitor account creation, and password resets will be unavailable.

We appreciate your patience while this maintenance is being completed and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Normal access will be restored as soon as the work is finished. Please contact the Help Desk with any questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440

Upgrade to Moodle 5.1 — Thursday, July 23rd

LITS will be upgrading Bryn Mawr’s instance of Moodle this Thursday, July 23rd, 2026 at approximately 7:30-8am EST. We do not anticipate any service disruptions due to this change. However, there will be changes to Moodle’s layout that we want you to be aware of-

Course Navigation and Organization:

  • A new Overview tab has been added to the top toolbar of the course page, enabling instructors to filter activities by type (example: quizzes, forums) rather than by week or topic, separate from the main course shell.
  • Sections can now have subsections, allowing you further structure and organization in your course.

Activity Management:

  • The Activities Chooser has been reorganized. Activities are now organized by type (assessment, communication, collaboration, etc.)rather than alphabetically.

Question Bank Changes:

  • You can now more easily share questions between courses you teach, rather than having questions contained to the course in which they were created. The questions bank also has an improved filter feature.

Content Creation and Accessibility:

  • Images now have an expanded alt text field. This will allow for more detailed descriptions of images.
  • Media files can now be drag and dropped directly into the TinyMCE text editor.

Grading and Feedback:

  • The middle divider in the Assignment grader interface can now be moved, allowing you more space for viewing students’ submissions or your feedback.
  • Moodle will now track whether students download feedback.

Removal of Chat:

  • The Chat activity will be decommissioned as part of this update. Instructors currently using this feature should identify alternative communication tools prior to the update.

For those with questions, please reach out to edtechservices@brynmawr.edu or the Help Desk at 610-526-7440 or help@brynmawr.edu. Thank you in advance for your attention to this!

Be Aware: Phishing Emails and Invoice Scams

Recently, we’ve seen an uptick in email scams telling community members that they have overdue or unpaid invoices. In many cases, the senders of these emails impersonate real companies and people that you know and trust, including members of your department or senior staff. This is a tactic that scammers use to get you to trust the information in the email. The email phishers hope that by both using familiar names and creating a sense of urgency – like using words like “Urgent!” or “Act now!” or threatening to turn off key services – that people will act without doing any further investigation and questioning.

If you receive any emails about unpaid invoices, particularly if it’s not something you were expecting, it’s good to do a little extra research:

  • If the email mentions someone from the Bryn Mawr community, reach out to that person directly and ask about the email.
  • Contact any vendors mentioned via trusted means, like the customer service number on their official website.
  • Do not follow any links or call any phone numbers that are listed in these unexpected emails.

If you believe you may have received one of these emails and provided any information or payment to the phisher, please get in touch with the Help Desk as soon as possible. The Help Desk is also happy to talk with you about any questions you may have about suspicious emails. We can be found on the

Reminder: Duo Verified Push: Coming Wednesday, July 15th

To address vulnerabilities that have been exploited by many recent phishing attacks, LITS will be making changes to Duo Multifactor Authentication over the coming months.
  • On July 15th, LITS will enable a more secure version of Duo Push called Duo Verified Push. This change will not affect other authentication methods such as phone call or Duo tokens. More details are below under Duo Verified Push.
  • In October, after Fall Break, LITS will disable the legacy phone call and text message passcode authentication options. We will communicate specific dates and support information closer to the effective date to ensure our community is supported through this transition.

Duo Verified Push

Duo Verified Push is very similar to Duo Push; the difference will be that you are asked to enter a code in the Duo Mobile app instead of just tapping “Approve.” It will look similar to this example image from Duo:

Why is LITS changing Duo?

The unverified Duo Push, phone call, and text message passcode methods are all vulnerable to types of attack that have become increasingly common. Almost all compromised accounts over the past two years have resulted from one of these vulnerabilities:
  • Duo Push/phone call: These are vulnerable to spontaneous and fatigue attacks, where a phisher sends a Push or phone call to the victim without warning (and repeatedly, in the case of a fatigue attack). It only takes a single accidental or mistaken interaction with these methods to allow a phisher into your account.
  • Text message passcode: This is vulnerable to social engineering attacks. The most common example is a phisher, masquerading as a College employee, will text the victim about a made-up issue with their account and ask for confirmation from the victim by requesting the passcode sent by Duo.
Removing these attack vectors should substantially decrease the number of compromised accounts. While this will improve the security of our system, these changes only increase the complexity required to attack the College and will not eliminate the possibility of compromised accounts. Community members should always remain vigilant for phishing attempts.
Please don’t hesitate to bring any questions to the LITS Help Desk in Canaday Library. You can drop by in-person, call 610-526-7440, or email help@brynmawr.edu. Thank you for your continued partnership in keeping Bryn Mawr systems secure!