8 Spots for Tightening Security on Campus
- By Linda L. Briggs
- 02/02/04
5. Sell Security to Management
Here's another challenge for all IT professionals, but that may be especially
tough on campus because of tight funds: getting management on board for any
security push. It's important that your school's top managers see security as
the priority it is,
and act accordingly - that is, that they allocate
realistic funds for the software you need to lock down your systems, for education
programs, and for adequate personnel.
Management responds to numbers, so putting together estimates on what security
breaches are costing the school in terms of down time, hours spent by your staff
repairing the damage, and so forth, can be effective. Damage to the school's
reputation can also be a warning point; many large-scale cyber-attacks have
made ample use of university computers.
For Susan Monsen, director of IT services at Yale University's Law School,
lack of resources is definitely an issue. Her biggest challenge: Dealing with
compromised student laptops on the network. "We don't have a way to scan and
remove viruses" automatically system-wide yet, she says. "That's something we're
working on." Regarding security in general, she says, "There are good tools
out there, but they're very expensive."
"There are good tools out there,
but they're very expensive."
The problem peaked in September at the law school, when a widely spread virus
was attacking Microsoft operating systems and unsuspecting students returned
to campus with infected laptops. Now, the problem is down to three or four laptops
a week, she says.
Requiring students to register their network cards in order to get access outside
the campus on the university's network helps, she says - students can then be
tracked down through a database and contacted if necessary through their network
IDs.
6. Set and Enforce Testing Standards
As you continue to develop, integrate, and enforce working security policies
for your organization, cooperation and communication among various groups on
campus are key. Among other things, this becomes important in setting and enforcing
testing standards for how new software is deployed. In examining how an SQL
server was compromised, a case study from the University of Memphis highlights
the
importance of policies
for making sure that testing is conducted in keeping with agreed-upon security
policies. As the authors of the case study conclude in one of their findings
after the security breach was closed, agreeing on what tests are required before
deployment into the production environment is paramount:
"Equilibrium between experimentation and security standards must be established.
It may not be appropriate to deploy an application into a production environment
unless appropriate security testing has been performed… Service administrators
must understand the importance of securing, and keeping secure, the production
environments upon which services depend."
7. Review Data Retention Policies
With the enactment of the USA Patriot Act in 2001 ("Uniting and Strengthening
America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism
Act of 2001"), data retention has become a security hot spot.
Setting record-retention policies, never easy, has become even more difficult.
According to Fred Beshears, senior strategist at Educational Technology Services
at the University of California-Berkeley, FERPA, an older government mandate
to protect student records, conflicts with the Patriot Act, which allows for
governmental access to student records in some cases. In short, Beshears says,
"You get into all these gnarly problems on [privacy]."
For an in-depth discussion of the conflicts of privacy and security on today's
campus, and some insights into the issue, read the in-depth discussion by Kent
Wada, information technology security and policy coordinator at the University
of California-Los Angeles.
Among other things, Wada notes that in the face of the Patriot Act and other
legislation, security concerns regarding e-mail become more difficult than ever
and probably need to be reviewed and reassessed. "The balancing act is to keep
relevant data only as long as it is legitimately needed, and no longer, lest
it become a liability."
"The balancing act is
to keep relevant data only as long as it is legitimately needed, and no longer,
lest it become a liability."
He notes that this same balancing act applies in other areas of data as well:
"This is also true for electronic records of another sort: computer transaction
logs. Web servers, e-mail servers, and other network devices all automatically
note when services are used… Policies should be viewed in the larger records
management context rather than as a separate effort. "
8. Curb File Sharing
The still hugely popular practice of file sharing, particularly videos and music,
via peer-to-peer software, remains an obvious Achilles heel.
As Wada notes in his article on campus security versus privacy, recording and
motion picture industry executives are pushing schools to do more to curb illicit
file sharing, thus turning up the heat on IT administrators. Not only is file
sharing generally illegal, depending on what's being shared, but peer-to-peer
networks, of course, are a huge security risk.
Many colleges and universities are fighting the file-sharing issue through
attempts at education on their Web sites. For example, the University of California
at Davis offers this article for students on legitimate music download sites
and options: http://technews.ucdavis.edu/news2.cfm?id=623.
Also, articles like this one on the University
of Wisconsin-Madison Web site , which clearly state that the recording industry
in now prosecuting individuals for file-sharing violations, are becoming more
common. And Penn State is modeling for students the good practice of staying
within the law by providing students with legal means to download
music files. As part of the education process, and to remind students of
the facts about file sharing, consider posting similar information and tools
on your own campus Web site or portal if you haven't already.
An Ongoing Challenge
IT administrators tasked with campus security face special challenges. But the
struggle for a secure campus isn't a futile one; there are many steps you can
take to help ensure that you, along with faculty, students and staff, sleep
easier at night. In general, it's probably best to look at security as an ongoing
challenge, one that will require some of your resources for a long time to come.
In fact, Rochester Institute of Technology's Barbour predicts that things will
get worse before they get better, as society and IT experts only gradually get
security issues under control and can begin to act proactively. "We're
just seeing the tip of the iceberg. The worst of it is yet to come, and it's
going to take a while to catch up." Accept the security challenge and begin
now to tighten your campus networks.
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