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C-Level View :: January 10, 2007

01/10/07

Executive View

Learning the Lessons and Moving Ahead

An interview with Rodney J. Petersen, EDUCAUSE

By Mary Grush

Despite intensive security measures, institutions are still suffering breaches – sometimes quite painful and costly ones. Since UCLA’s major incident reported this past November, we spoke with EDUCAUSE security expert Rodney Petersen, to get his perspectives and advice for higher education leadership.

CT: The security breach uncovered this past fall at UCLA was among the largest higher education has seen. How does this breach compare to others?

Petersen: Well on the one hand I’m amazed by the interest that this particular breach has generated, but I think there are a couple things that are unique to this incident as compared to other ones. First, is the magnitude of the number of records exposed – 800,000 is by far the largest incident involving a college or university that I’m aware of. And secondly, the fact that the data was contained in a central information system is fairly unique in that the majority of other instances have involved distributed servers or databases maintained by departments or other organizations at the university....

Worth Noting

Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities: A recent report, Our Cultural Commonwealth, from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences details the need for a comprehensive online infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences, the design of which should be informed by experts from those disciplines....
Supercharging the Ancients: The University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) is developing a real-time 3D rendering model of the City of Rome in AD400, for use in the classroom and for research in the institute’s new 3D theater....
Federated ID Milestone: The Internet2 community demonstrated last month the interoperability of the Shibboleth federated identity management software with theNational Science Foundation’s FastLane online grant administration system used by more than 250,000 researchers, students, and faculty. The demonstration is a major step towards the use of campus identities to access online federal government resources....

From the Personnel Office

New IBM Associate Partner to Focus on Open Source in Higher Education: Mark A. Olson has joined IBM Global Business Services as an associate partner, with responsibilities for higher education strategy and a primary focus on open source initiatives and higher education business administration. Olson has a long career in higher education administrative services....