This page lists all official IT service alerts shared with the KAUST community. Alerts are also delivered directly to your KAUST email.
Standard Weekly Maintenance Window
Thursday at 5:00 PM to Saturday at 8:00 PM. During this window, some services may experience temporary slowdowns, intermittent issues, or brief outages while essential maintenance is performed.
Some KAUST systems hosted on the KAUST Portal (portal.kaust.edu.sa) are maintained directly by our cloud vendor. These activities are scheduled quarterly and are independent of KAUST IT's regular maintenance windows. They may temporarily affect the availability or performance of several online services.
View Planned Vendor Maintenance
The most recent IT service alerts are shown below. For the full history, see the archive further down this page.
30 September, 2026
Scheduled Maintenance: KAUST Sign-In Services, IT Website, and Network SwitchesPlanned IT maintenance includes a 30-minute KAUST sign-in maintenance window, IT Website maintenance, and ongoing network switch upgrades. Review the schedule and any action you may need to take.
27 September, 2026
IT Maintenance Notice: IT Website MaintenanceThe KAUST IT Website will undergo maintenance on Tuesday, 6 October, from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. No downtime is expected, but the website may be slower than usual during this time.
The Change Advisory Board (CAB) is a cross-functional group within KAUST IT that reviews and approves proposed IT changes to maintain service reliability and reduce risk. The CAB Chair is appointed by the Chief Information Officer (CIO).
For urgent or high-impact situations, the Emergency Change Advisory Board (ECAB) may be activated to ensure timely decisions while protecting service stability.
All IT changes are reviewed under the Change Management process. When communication is needed, an IT Alert is published and shared with the KAUST community. This includes:
All past IT service alerts are listed below, including scheduled maintenance notices, unplanned outages, and service restoration updates.
05 March, 2026
| Activity | Details |
|---|---|
| Gmail Attachment Security Update | When 5 March 2026, 10:00 PM
What is changing If an email sent to your KAUST Gmail account contains a file type that may pose a security risk, the attachment will now be removed automatically.
You will still receive the email, but the attachment will be replaced with a clear message explaining why it was blocked. What you should do If you need the file, ask the sender to share it using a trusted platform such as OneDrive, SharePoint, or Google Drive, and send you the sharing link instead.
Learn more here . |
| eduroam Network Access Update | When 5 March 2026, 5:00 PM
What is changing There is no change for KAUST community members using eduroam.
This update applies to visitors connecting to eduroam while on the KAUST campus. Visitors connected to eduroam will be able to access the internet only. Impact Visitor devices connected to eduroam will not be able to access internal KAUST systems or services.
What you should do No action is required from KAUST community members.
This update is shared for awareness if you are hosting guests or visitors on campus, as their eduroam connection will provide internet access only and will not allow access to internal KAUST resources. |
| KAUST GitLab | Last week’s GitLab upgrade was originally planned to move to version 18.9.
During the maintenance window, the team identified an issue with that version and adjusted the plan as a precaution. GitLab was successfully upgraded to version 18.8.5, which includes important security fixes. There was no impact to repositories or data. More details can be found here . |
