New Web Solution for Medicine

A new tool developed by the Faculty of Medicine will help research institutes and departments promote their work more securely. The new “WebPac” platform builds on the recent redesign of the Faculty’s website and creates a better experience for visitors and a simpler system for administrators to manage.

WebPac was developed by Discovery Commons and the Office of Strategy, Communications and External Relations (OSCER). It will provide Faculty units with a secure, low-cost solution to their web needs.

“In the past, departments or institutes that wanted a website either had to build one from scratch — which could be costly and time consuming — or could turn to the University’s IronPoint system, which was challenging to manage,” says Roberta Brown, OSCER’s Digital Communications Specialist. “With WebPac, we can create a new mobile-friendly website that can be tailored to meet a unit’s needs, while delivering a stable platform that ensures sites across Medicine can be backed-up and maintained at the Faculty level. This lets units focus on creating new content for their sites without having to worry about the technical details.”

Protecting the Faculty from cyber-attacks is one of the major reasons for this new platform, explains Wes Robertson, Director of Discovery Commons.

“The range and scale of threats has grown exponentially in recent years,” says Robertson. “It’s no longer a hacker working in isolation trying to crack a website for the thrill of it. The attacks today are being done by large-scale enterprises that are often tied to organized crime.”

The attacks pose two threats: one to the reputation of the Faculty by having embarrassing pictures or statements added to websites, while the other is having data stolen. “Even seemingly innocuous information like email addresses can be turned into a commodity and sold,” says Robertson.

WebPac also offers a consistent experience for visitors to U of T Medicine websites, making it quicker and easier for them to find the information they’re looking for.

“We tested the Faculty’s site to ensure its design and organization of information met our obligations under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, but we also made the site easier for visitors to navigate. We took what we learned from that work and applied it to WebPac,” Brown says.

For more information on WebPac, please contact Roberta Brown by email or phone (416-978-1461).