Longwood U Upgrades Security Awareness Training System

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 10/26/10

Longwood University has gone public with an upgrade it performed over the summer to the application that delivers security awareness training on campus. The university has been using Managed Ongoing Awareness and Trust (MOAT) from Awareity since 2006. In July 2010 the Farmville, VA institution upgraded to Enhanced Vault, a version of MOAT that provides alerts to campus faculty and staff based on their specific roles at the school.

The new version allows Longwood to upload materials related to security training, such as training presentations, policies, procedures, videos, and maps--into a central storage location and then communicate the addition of the digital documents to specific users as updates and changes are made. The program also lets administrators of MOAT ask customized true-false or multiple-choice questions to test user understanding and acknowledgement.

The university requires staff to take cyber security awareness training annually to learn about topics that include malware, spam, phishing, and identity theft, as well as compliance regulations for FERPA and HIPAA. MOAT tracks compliance with that policy, notifies staff on a regular basis when it's overdue and until it has been completed, and provides progress reporting and documentation.

"The HIPAA training ensures that we get our annual training on HIPAA for the faculty and graduate students in clinical programs that must adhere to HIPAA requirements," said Lissa Power-deFur, director of the Longwood Center for Communication, Literacy, and Learning.

The MOAT Enhanced Vault also provides access to new reporting capabilities that allow staff and students to file confidential reports on campus incidents. The threat assessment, incident management, and prevention service (TIPS) automatically notifies appropriate threat assessment team members or staff and tracks follow-up activities.

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

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