The number one
challenge in promoting security awareness and the critical need for
University leaders, campus users and systems administrators to recognize
the importance of securing University systems-is overcoming apathy.
Due to the fact
that Universities, unlike corporations and government agencies, can't
just erect sophisticated firewalls to prevent unauthorized people
from accessing our networks, there is a critical need to ensure that
measures are taken to secure University systems from attacks and intrusions.
Many of these
measures require a monetary investment, while others require an investment
in staff members to manage them. It's safe to say at this point in
time that the majority of Universities are still trying to keep up
with technology changes and innovations, rather than putting a great
deal of emphasis on protecting their technology investments.
But consider this-in
late December, the University closed for the holidays and during this
time period, hackers broke into a campus web server that serves one
of the colleges on campus. The damages they caused were so extensive
that the web server has not operated efficiently since that time and
now needs to be reinstalled.
In January of
this year, hackers broke into another college department's web server
and used that system to attack government and corporate systems all
over the world. Due to the invasive methods that hackers tend to use,
it may be months before the system administrator really knows the
extent of the damages. There have been numerous instances where workstations
in colleges and departments on this campus have been compromised by
hackers and used in attacks on external entities.
While campus departments
tend to get excited about new technology or applications they can
use and much less so about investing in security measures to protect
them, it is critical to employ security measures now to protect the
University's investment in technology resources and ensure that campus
users enjoy uninterrupted access to a number of services and applications.