IT/WeeklyMinIT
Weekly updates from Mozilla IT on things we're doing to support and empower all of Mozilla in our mission keep the web a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent.
2019-07-01
It’s time for the weekly MinIT update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to support Mozilla in it’s mission and beyond.
Lots of great content today with tons of participation after the Company all Hands in Whistler or as I like to call it “Camp Mozilla”. I can honestly say we got the full whistler experience. Just look at the change in this fellow from day 1 to day 5.
Now several updates from Security.
Security takes many forms at Mozilla, as demonstrated at the Security Mini-con held in Whistler. Security practitioners from across the company gave 5-minute lightning talks on projects they were working on or problems they found interesting. Have a security question or just want to join the conversation? Find us on #security or #infosec in Slack. After all security is everyone’s job.
Next up from security is an update on product innovation. Last week, Andrew Krug, Guillaume Destuynder, and Gene Wood presented MozDef : aka Enterprise Defense Platform at AWS’s Inaugural Security Conference, Re: Inforce. Workshops were conducted both days and generated a lot of interest and feedback on the emergent product. A pre release program for customers interested in trying out Enterprise Defense platform will begin on July 8. Interested parties can contact … me. All media related questions should be direct to Ellen Canale.
The Final update in the Security Category is that we’ve launched new TLS guidelines for server side TLS. We all know that configuring your web server, database, or mail server for TLS can be highly error prone so we’ve launched a new version of the Mozilla SSL Configuration generator to help out with that. Using the tool getting TLS configuration right is as easy as clicking a few buttons. Special thanks to April King for that.
On the AV Ops front lots of great work as well.
Last week the YVR office officially said goodbye to Vidyo and converted 100% of conference rooms to zoom rooms. This effort is part of a 2 phased approach in collaboration with WPR to optimize the Vancouver office for collaboration bringing the total number of conference rooms to 12 at this location. Special thanks on that to Tara Robertson for finding spacing in the community where the old AV equipment could continue to provide value.
Related to that this will kick off the effort to convert all of the office conference rooms to full Zoom rooms and deliver and improved conferencing experience. Look for an email on that in the coming days.
With that we’ll close with the Zoom Tip of the Week: “Did you know that Zoom Mobile is feature parity with the desktop client? Give it a try on your mobile platform today!”
That’s the MinIT. I’ll see you next week.
2019-06-10
Enterprise Information Security and Trust & Security have drafted new security policies for all Mozilla employees. For the next two weeks, there is an Open Comment period so that you can provide feedback. You can find links to the draft policies in the meeting notes, with instructions to submit feedback anonymously. You can also submit feedback in-person during a Comment Session in Whistler.
Enterprise Information Security and Trust & Security have published the following draft security policies for Open Comment through June 24. Mozilla Account Handling Policy Mozilla Device Handling Policy To submit written feedback, please follow the links at the top of each policy. Feedback can be submitted anonymously. Or, if you'd prefer, you can attend the Security Policy Comment Session in Whistler.
Data Analytics As we take on this new adventure around 'Join Firefox' and creating more personal relationships with our users, we can't do this without data. For the first time ever in a major campaign launch IT contributed to the tracking the progress against the metrics via a Tableau dashboard accessible to all paid employees. Please check it out!!
2019-06-03
The first update this week is that we are now completely moved to Zoom for video conferencing. The Vidyo system was shut down as planned on May 31 and all Vidyo accounts have been disabled. Please remember to convert all of your calendar invites over to zoom links.
The graph up there shows the rate of transition from Vidyo to Zoom over time.
Here’s a quick zoom tip! Did you know that you can go to zoom.us/test in order to test your audio and video setup prior to joining a call.
Next up is an update from the IAM team. We’re doing an experiment with a new add-on to help you know when you may be the victim of a phishing attack. The add-on will show a green theme in Firefox when entering your credentials on a trusted SSO site. The add-on will also detect if you’re about to enter your credentials on a dangerous site. Feel free to give it a try today. The add-on is generally available at the following URL. Any feedback can be reported here or directly to kang@mozilla.com .
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sso-no-phishing/
That’s the MinIT. I’ll see you next week.
2019-05-20
It’s time for the weekly MinIT update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to empower Mozillians in their mission to keep the web a global public resource open and accessible to all.
We’re marching steadily toward 100% participation in signups for Zoom with 91% of staff now having activated their zoom accounts. Using zoom has been great! Did you know that you can type /zoom in slack to get a meeting invite?
Friendly reminder that Vidyo desktop will be decommissioned on May 31. Make sure you transition all of your calendar appointments by then AND download all those recorded meetings since vidyo is around for a limited time only.
If you’re looking for Zoom training all the trainings are available on the following Mana page and an open Q&A session will be held on Wednesday morning 8:00am PST. For more information visit the following link:
https://mana.mozilla.org/wiki/display/AVSE/Zoom+Transition
Second is a friendly reminder from infosec that phishing has been on the rise lately and it’s important to remain vigilant. If you suspect that you are being phished, please do report it to the infosec team for assistance in validating the case and helping with incident response should it be a real phishing attack. Please also be on the lookout for another ‘Security Nudge’ email in a few weeks from Mozilla’s trust team focused on phishing. More information can be found here on how to spot phishing and what to do.
https://infosec.mozilla.org/guidelines/phishing.html
That’s the MinIT. I’ll see you next week.
2019-05-13
It’s time for the weekly MinIT update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to empower Mozillians in their mission to keep the web a global public resource open and accessible to all.
Last week we talked with you about the rollout of Zoom! Our new video conferencing software. The numbers are in and I think we can consider the first week of the move to be a complete success. 80% of staff have registered for a Zoom account generating over 2000 meetings in just one week.
Overall satisfaction scores are reported to be 97% satisfied. If you’ve not yet made the transition to Zoom check out the Mana page here and remember to get those meetings moved to Zoom before May 31st. As always questions go to #avops on slack.
That’s the MinIT. I’ll see you next week.
2019-05-06
It’s time for the weekly MinIT update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to keep the web a global public resource open an accessible to all.
First update on today’s agenda is we’re migrating to a new mobile device management platform known as simple MDM. Simple mdm allows us to manage iOS and macOS devices in the office spaces like the meeting room iPads. Migrating to simpleMDM should drastically streamline the speed at which we rollout Zoom conferencing in addition to providing better support for IOS and MacOS software updates in the future.
Second update is that Zoom is live today for all staff Mozillians. Check your email and follow the instructions to activate your Zoom account. Vidyo will be active until May 31, 2019 and we’ll give some more details on that next week.
If you’re looking for Zoom training there are sessions available Tuesday and Thursday. These will also be recorded if you can’t make one of the time slots with more training coming next week.
Finally to assist you in making Zoom calls from the conference rooms instructions have been added to the room monitors along with quick reference cards. If you have any questions or need help, please reach out in #avops on slack. Happy Zooming!
Thanks the MinIT. I’ll see you next week.
2019-04-29
It’s time for the weekly MinIT update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to empower mozillians in their mission to keep the web a global public resource open and accessible to all.
Only two updates in today’s very short but important MinIT.
Update number one is that we’re zooming. Zoom day is May 6, 2019. What this means is that you’ll start seeing a Zoom button on all the meeting room iPads in the coming days and get your personal zoom meetings account by May 6. Any feedback as always goes to #avops on slack.
My second update is a non-traditional MinIT update since generally we don’t use this as a means of announcing departures. But this departure as I like to say is near and dear to me.
On May 3, 2018 Mozilla will say farewell to our Director of InfoSec Jeff Bryner. Jeff has been a Mozillians for over half a decade and if you’ve had the pleasure to work with Jeff you know he really lives the Mozilla values in everything he does. I know I speak for everyone when I say we wish you the best of luck on your next adventure.
So hopefully you’ll join me in a final tip of the hat to Jeff to say farewell … that’s the MinIT. I’ll see YOU next week.
2019-04-22
It’s time for the weekly MinIT update. Where we tell you all the things IT is doing support mozillians in their mission to keep the web a global public resource open and accessible to all.
Today’s one and only update comes from the AVOps team and it’s Video Conferencing related. It looks like we’re on track to deliver Zoom accounts for all Staff Mozillians beginning on May 6th. This means that the app will show up in the SSO Dashboard and be available on the meeting room iPads as an alternate option for meetings.
The team plans to support both options through May 31st, 2019. There will also be open training sessions for the Zoom platform during the week of May 6.
The AVOps team wants to thank you for your patience as we enter this transitional phase across our conference rooms. If you have an issue or feedback make sure to report it in the #avops channel on slack. Personally I had never done this until just recently. I was in a video meeting, dropped into the slack channel to report an audio issue and the team was able to fix it remotely for everyone in less than 2-minutes.
That’s the MinIT. I’ll see YOU next week.
2019-04-15
It’s time for the weekly MinIT update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to empower mozillians in their missing to keep the web a global public resource open and accessible to all.
This is week 3 of April which officially makes it Mozilla Spring Cleaning week. In partnership with our compliance team, IT is scouring data stores for personally identifiable information that can be remove. Work is underway on SurveyGizmo, Salesforce, and other systems. Now might be a great time to give some thought to any PII that you could clean away as well. Thanks for helping Mozilla live by it’s principles specifically with regard to lean data.
In partnership with WPR we’ve also recently launched a tool called X-Matters. The X-Matters platform is a product that allows you to receive emergency related updates for your physical location and check-in to let colleagues know that you are safe. We all hope to never need to use a tool like this but might in the event things like natural disasters, active assailants, or terrorist activity. You can visit the link below to enroll your mobile devices with X-Matters today. XMatters
Just those two updates for today. That’s the MinIT. I’ll see you next week.
2019-04-08
It’s time for the weekly mini update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to empower mozillians in their mission to keep the web a global public resource open and accessible to all.
Our first update comes from the data and analytics team. In collaboration with Open Innovation we’ve launch the first version of the support dashboard. The dashboard is used to track the overall performance of an application we internally commonly refer to as SUMO. SUMO stands for support.mozilla.org. The dashboard is just as start and the team will continue to add more components over the next few sprints. If you want to check it out the dashboard is available at the link below but currently only open to Staff Mozillians. [1]
2019-04-01
Time to start adding updates here again. A very nice contributor pointed out they like reading the updates.
It’s time for the weekly mini update where we tell you all the things IT is doing to empower Mozillians in their mission to keep the web a global public resource open and accessible to all.
Our first update comes from the IT Data and Analytics team. They reached an important General Availability Milestone for what’s being called Data Platform 2.0 least week. The new data platform will be used for things like people analytics, marketing analytics, and Firefox monthly active users. The new platform now running in GCP can scale nearly limitlessly to house new data sources as we bring them online. Any questions contact @Josephine on slack.
Speaking of data. The IT customer operations team is working to support Firefox for Enterprise by using Salesforce to see potential and projected revenue for new the relatively new offering. This allows the sales team to stay up date nearly automatically through the entirety of the sales cycle.
Finally … this IS the last week that the Eventboard experiment will run in the Europe Mozilla Offices. The final numbers are showing that we were able to remove upwards of 400 zombie meetings across the three offices.
Wrapping up… Just a quick reminder that the MinIT video is available on the IT MinIT wiki along with the text transcript, low bandwidth audio, and any links shown during the project meeting.
That’s the MinIT see you next week.
2019-02-04
- Data Team Service Metrics (Heather) In this week’s Data Team Sprint Demo, the team showcased their PoC on the Service Health Metrics. The team is focused on being data-informed to ensure we are providing the right level of service to our users. Metrics to help IT product team understand engagement as well as metrics that focus on resolution time, uptime, service/incident requests and alerts will improve our service levels & product capabilities for Mozilla. [2]
- GTM Support Capabilities (Heather) The IT Customer Ops team partnered with both the Customer Care and Firefox Product & Engineering teams to provide training over the last 2 weeks. Firefox Product and Engineering engaged in a session on the Enterprise Sales cycle; everything from Lead Gen, Lead Scoring, Pipeline Management, Lead Conversion, Sales Process and Contract Management. The Customer Care & IT Support team also received an all day training session focusing on the Firefox for Enterprise common issues, documentation, how to troubleshoot issues and our SLA’s.
- AirMo Research (Heather) AirMo Research Plan is underway with Survey & Usability studies being planned. Many thanks to all those in the #survey channel who contributed to the AirMo User Survey the team has launched. If you would like to be part of the upcoming usability study, please sign up here. [3]
- JIRA Tooling (Mark) IT took another step in our Agile transformation journey! We completed our tooling POC and implemented JIRA as our solution. It provides a best in class tool to improve how we collaborate, plan, track and report business value and speed to market. As we continue to move forward our roadmap will drive our OKR to build our Agile practice focused on gaining efficiency in IT and value to our partners.
- EOL for IRC in IT (Mark) IT will be moving to Slack channels as the primary contact interface for most services in H1 of 2019. This will be a phased approach from IRC channels, and we will notify members of the those IRC channels before those the channel is retired. The MOC and ServiceDesk IRC channels will be retired as of February 1, 2019. IRC Channel Comms [4]
2019-01-28
- January 28th is International Data Privacy Day. The purpose of Data Privacy Day is to create awareness about respecting privacy and data protection best practices. In the spirit of data privacy day we’d like to hear your stories about how you or your team use lean data practices at Mozilla. The call for participation and more information on data privacy day is available on Mozilla Discourse at the link below. (Discourse Post)
- Our Business Operations Support team produced this short 6-minute video to demo workflow improvements they made with our WPR partners. Now tickets are automatically assigned, workflow is guided and better utilization metrics are available for everything from space planning to shipping and receiving (Demo)
- We got an initial glimpse into the new AirMo look and feel this week which is just the start of efforts targeted to improve navigation of events & content. (Wireframes)
- Completed the setup of a comprehensive security framework within our Data Platform 2.0 PoC that will enable the management of security policies across all components which is a key element to Mozilla data governance.
2019-01-14
- Join us for this month’s IT Brown Bag Presentation! On Friday, January 18th, at 1700 GMT/0900 PST, Mozilla's own Jim Blandy will be joining us to talk about the Rust programming language. IT Brown Bags are broadcast live in the #BrownBags Vidyo channel and through live streaming and recording on AirMo (IT Operations channel)!
- Introducing MVK's Mozilla Mind Maps! 2019 is a year of learning and new adventures for all of us. I'll be enhancing the MinIT by presenting mind maps on Mozilla-relevant topics during the weeks where IT doesn't have content to fill the MinIT. Here's an introduction!
2019-01-07
- Mozilla IT will be empowering the mission in many new and different ways in 2019 Stay tuned as we develop and share specific plans!
- We are developing a software engineering practice skilled at delivering cloud native solutions. We will be making Mozilla-centric solutions by augmenting outside offerings through APIs and implementing our own solutions where it makes sense to do so. Our unique, global, community+staff use cases require us to get creative and cloud native to best empower our global, user-centric mission.
- In the last call, Emma asked if someone could take the BMO Dupes web service and create a Slackbot for it. I built a function in Python to access the service, deployed it on AWS Lambda, fronted it with a Slackbot (in our sandbox), and created all the AWS infrastructure and a Continuous Integration pipeline to automate Lambda development and deployment. I documented everything in a public Gdoc (with extensive links to source materials) and my source code is in Github. Additional sources related to CI are in this Github. I’d love your help making it better, and I’d love for it to be a source for people learning about CI, AWS, Python, Lambda, or Slackbots. Contribute and learn and share!
- 2018 was great, and 2019 will be even better! In the words of Coachella headliner, Ariana Grande: 2018, look what you taught us and for that we say, thank u, next!
2018-12-17
- Thank you Potch! for everything you've done for Mozilla and the open web. We love you buddy! You'll always be a Mozillian :)
- Happy Holidays! No updates this week from IT, but we've been happy to help all Mozillians work smarter, faster, and safer in 2018, and look forward to making Mozilla and the web better for all in 2019. Be safe and have fun this holiday season!