Following Miscues, Ohio U Redoubling Security Efforts

  • By Paul McCloskey
  • 11/08/07
Ohio University CIO Bruce Bible has outlined plans to strengthen campus security practices and awareness following a series of setbacks over the last year, according to a report in The Post, OU's campus newspaper.

In a meeting to university trustees last week, Bible outlined the steps his office has taken to strengthen its security defenses and plans for the future, according to the Post.

In the first half of the 2006/2007 academic year, OU received more Digital Millennium Copyright Act notices from the Recording Industry Association of America than any other university. Five students are currently facing lawsuits filed in federal district court in Columbus, Ohio.

In 2005, the medical records of 60,000 people who had been treated at a campus health center and personal information of 300,000 university donors, including thousands of Social Security numbers, were exposed to hackers who breached university servers.

Bible told the trustees OU has taken several measures to improve campus computer security, including:
OU's Hudson Health Center went back online the Office of Information Technology staff configured and installed six new firewalls to protect the university's data center.

OIT stopped using Social Security numbers and replaced university ID cards, which contained unencrypted SSNs and student names.

Bible hired a new director of Information Security, who began work this month. He has also expanded the university's security team to five members. Bible also said he expects to fill eight more positions before the end of the year, including a director of systems and operations, firewall administrators, a security analyst, and director of  customer services.

In the file-sharing arena, OU purchased software to stop file-sharers, shut down at least one file-sharing network on campus and signed a contract with a subscription music service to provide free music to students.

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About the Author

Paul McCloskey is contributing editor of Syllabus.

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