Weekly Tech Update: December 22
Welcome to the weekly newsletter dedicated to everything IT! Newsy, fun, informational—get your quick digest of tech content and then go about your day. Check for updates here every Monday.
Weekly Tech Update: December 22
Upcoming: Winter break maintenance windows
This year, as always, IT Services will be performing several upgrades and conducting routine maintenance on various systems to ensure they are ready for the return of students in January.
This week we will be upgrading AWS EKS / Kubernetes:
IT Services will be upgrading our container environment (AWS EKS / Kubernetes) to version 1.33.
We will upgrade the Production EKS cluster on Monday, December 22, 2025, starting at 8 a.m. This will take around one hour.
The AWS EKS / Kubernetes environment is the backbone of many Miami applications, including Courselist, FindUser, and the IAM Portal. The nodes in the EKS cluster are an important part of our cloud-based infrastructure!
This is a rolling upgrade, meaning each node of the cluster will be upgraded one at a time while the others continue to maintain the environment—so we do not expect any outages to occur. However, if you experience issues during this maintenance window, please contact IT Help.
Need some last-minute holiday gift ideas?
Looking for a last-minute gift? We got you covered with the top six tech gifts for this holiday season! Our list will provide you with inspo and easy access to this year's best gifts.
Read on for our recommendations.
Miami's John Virden Named a Top 100 CISO
John Virden, Miami’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Assistant Vice President in IT Services, has been named one of the top 100 CISOs in the United States and Canada.
As CISO, it's John's job to keep Miami's data safe from hackers and help our community maintain a high level of vigilance against phishing attacks and other cybersecurity threats.
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Meet the Newest Member in IT Services
Please help us welcome one of our newest team members in IT Services!
Ruowei Fischer just joined the project management office as a business analyst II.
In her role, she acts as a liaison between the functional user (or client) and the technical team (or developer). Her job is to gather information and requirements from the client. What problem are they trying to solve with this software development project? What are their desired outcomes? What’s the desired timeline? She takes that information and shares it with the developers, sometimes even helping design a solution that can then be implemented by the technical team.
