The Change Advisory Board (CAB) helps ensure that changes to IT services at KAUST are reviewed, coordinated, and implemented responsibly.
Whenever significant changes to systems, platforms, or infrastructure are planned, CAB provides oversight to minimize disruption and ensure services remain reliable for the KAUST community.
CAB brings together representatives from across the IT Department to review proposed changes, assess potential risks, and confirm that the right communication and preparation steps are in place.
IT systems at KAUST support research, teaching, and daily operations across the university. Changes to these systems must be carefully planned to ensure continuity.
This process helps maintain stable, reliable IT services while allowing improvements and updates to move forward safely.
All changes to the production IT environment are categorized based on their risk profile and scope of impact.
Pre-approved, low-risk changes with established procedures. Automatically processed without requiring CAB approval.
Changes requiring formal review and approval. Classified as Level 1, 2, or 3 based on scope, complexity, and potential impact.
Urgent changes expedited outside the standard window to restore service levels or address critical security incidents.
This is the designated window for changes requiring service interruption. All outages must still be requested, authorized, and coordinated through the standard process. Changes outside this window require explicit CAB approval and should not become common practice.
CAB includes representatives from different IT teams across the university. Each IT team designates a person to represent it at CAB meetings.
A CAB Chair, designated by the CIO, leads each meeting and coordinates the review process. Depending on the change being reviewed, subject matter experts and Information Security representatives may also participate.
Some situations require urgent action, such as critical outages, security incidents, or immediate service restoration.
In these cases, an Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) may be convened to review and approve urgent changes quickly. ECAB includes only the stakeholders necessary to assess the specific change.
ECAB allows the IT Department to respond rapidly while still maintaining oversight and accountability. Upon approval, an alert is sent to all IT staff informing them of the emergency change.
Some changes may affect people across the KAUST community. When this happens, the IT Department communicates through IT Alerts.
These alerts help ensure people are aware of potential impacts and can plan accordingly.
View recent alerts on the IT Alerts page .
