 IT Services - Articles

Cell phone purchasing

Standard classroom and computer labs are equipped with appropriate technology for teaching.

The IT Security department within the IT Services portfolio is OC’s center of expertise for cybersecurity advising and activities including assessment, auditing, monitoring, investigation, technology selection, awareness training and incident response.

Microsoft 365 (M365) is a subscription based suite of applications available via the cloud or for download to a local device. Okanagan College employees and currently enrolled students have access to this service. This educational subscription includes access to the core Office products (Word/Excel/PowerPoint/OneNote) as well as cloud based services such as Outlook, Teams and OneDrive. Additional products may be available for download. Both staff and student email services are through M365.

Use the Block or Allow settings to help control unwanted and unsolicited email messages by creating and managing lists of email addresses and domains that you trust and those that you don’t.

M365's Outlook / Exchange Online Protection will automatically scan incoming email for bulk, spam, phishing and malware (viruses) and automatically quarantine suspicious emails preventing them from appearing in your Inbox. The system will notify you of these suspicious packages and give you opportunity release items the algorithm may have misidentified or permanently block the sender.

When you accidentally delete an email message in Outlook on the web you can recover the message if it's still in your Deleted Items folder. In some cases, you can even recover items after the Deleted Items folder is emptied.

Starting in spring 2022, Okanagan College will begin rolling out Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) to all faculty, staff, and students for Microsoft 365 and OC applications. MFA adds an additional layer to the login authentication process. In addition to the account username and password and third piece of validation is required typically from a time sensitive phone application.

Teams has all the features you're used to using with telephones, including voicemail, call forwarding, and much more. Teams calling is calibrated to work with the OC switchboard. Wherever you have Internet access this service allows you to connect to your phone local from any device, desktop, laptop or cell phone that you can connect to Teams with; on or off campus.

OC Employees who are off-site can gain access to on-campus resources by creating a VPN connection using Global Protect software. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection makes a remote device appear to be physically on the Kelowna Campus and thus allows access to services such as shared network files, on campus printers, Banner and more. This service is normally restricted to only college owned devices.