Security/Privacy
- Disaster Recovery: Personal and Up Close
-
6/8/2007
As we move into what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts as an above normal Atlantic hurricane season, this month's column will focus on a little considered aspect of disaster recovery, personal business continuity.
- U Indiana Grad Student Exposes Firefox Vulnerability
-
6/8/2007
Christopher Soghoian, a grad student at Indiana University's School of Informatics, has discovered a security flaw associated a number of big-name commercial extensions to the Firefox Web browser.
- TAMU Prof Finds Cheap Security Via 'Thermal Noise'
-
6/8/2007
A Texas A&M engineer claims to have discovered a cheap but effective way to encrypt messages using "noise" generated when electrons flow along a wire.
- It's Not Easy Being Red
-
6/7/2007
Uh oh, he's going to get all political. Nope. This has nothing to do with red state versus blue state, despite the political season. Nor has it anything to do with communist red, despite the current news about relations between the United States and Russia.
- U Pennsylvania Drafts Policy to Minimize Use of SSNs
-
6/7/2007
The University of Pennsylvania has drafted a policy designed to minimize the use of Social Security numbers at the school after deciding the numbers constitute "sensitive data that can be abused by identity thieves to commit fraud."
- UCLA Disputes Position on Congressional Piracy List
-
6/4/2007
Administrators from the University of California at Los Angeles are disputing the validity of data used by two congressional committees to identify universities that allowed the most illegal downloading of movie and music content on their campuses.
- Academics Joining Ranks Declaring 'E-Mail Bankruptcy'
-
5/29/2007
More university professors are joining the ranks of those who have given up or severely curtailed their use of e-mail as a medium for personal--and most of all--private correspondence. They have had enough with electronic spam, come-ons, nonsense and smut-vertisements.
- OSU Adopts Hybrid Backup Approach
-
5/24/2007
A new backup and restore system at Oregon State University Foundation has reduced weekly backup time for the system administrator from days, to just 90 minutes. "I'd hate to think how my Mondays would be without it," said Systems and Database Administrator Lyle Utt.
- IT Funding, Student Safety Top Concerns for CIOs
-
5/22/2007
University information technology officials rated funding for technology as the most pressing issue they face, according to an annual "current issues" survey by the Educause higher education association. The survey asked campus IT managers to rank a series of information technology challenges on their campus, including security, funding, identity management, and strategic planning. Funding was No. 1.
- Illegal File Sharing Rooted Out at Ohio U, Say Admins
-
5/21/2007
Ohio University boasted that, following crackdown, illegal file sharing via its campus networks has been eradicated. University CIO Brice Bible said that illegal file-sharing on the university's network had "virtually stopped," according to a report in the Athens (OH) Times.
- AlarmPoint Launches Notification Grants
-
5/17/2007
AlarmPoint Systems has launched a new grant program offering emergency notification systems through its new Crisis Notification Systems Grants Program.
- Congress Warns University Presidents on P2P File Sharing
-
5/15/2007
Congressional leaders have sent letters to 19 major university presidents warning them to step up efforts to curb illegal Internet file sharing or Congress "will be forced to act." "The fact that copyright piracy is not unique to college and university campuses is not an excuse for higher education officials to fail to take reasonable steps neither to eliminate such activity nor to appropriately sanction such conduct when discovered," said a letter addressed to Purdue University president Martin Jischke May 1, 2007.
- Carnegie Mellon Picks Open Network Monitoring Software
-
5/15/2007
Carnegie Mellon University purchased the NeXpose security software suite to help it enhance scanning and monitoring of its campus networks.
- Spy Camera Pioneer To Join Georgia Tech Faculty
-
5/14/2007
Wayne Wolf, a leading expert in embedded computing systems and smart cameras, will join the Georgia Institute of Technology in July to take the Rhesa "Ray" S. Farmer Jr. Distinguished Chair in Embedded Computer Systems.
- Net Scammers Swarm Following Virginia Tech Massacre
-
5/11/2007
Less than 36 hours after the Virginia Tech shootings, Internet scammers were creating fraudulent charity websites, according to the U.S. Computer Emergency Response Team.
- Indiana U Earns Kudos from NSA
-
5/11/2007
Indiana University was named a "center of excellence" by the super-secret federal National Security Agency. NSA specializes in intelligence gathering for United States defense and intelligence planners.
- It's All About Risk
-
5/11/2007
The recent shootings at Virginia Tech have focused public attention on the safety of students on our campuses. Just how safe are they anyway?
- Texas A&M, Millersville U, Tops in Cyber Defense Contest
-
5/11/2007
Texas A&M University and Millersville University of Pennsylvania finished first and second in the second-annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), a contest to find which team could do the best job maintaining a business network that was under a simulated cyber attack.
- Researchers Spot New Threat: Peer to Peer Botnets
-
5/10/2007
A team of computer security researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the University of North Carolina, and Georgia Tech are warning of a new generation of automated software intruders--peer to peer botnets--which they say pose an unprecedented threat because they possess no central point of failure that can be counter-attacked.
- States Launch Blanket Reviews of Campus Sec Policies
-
5/10/2007
Few higher education institutions ended their April calendars without launching a task force or study group to examine how to improve campus security in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings.
- DHS Awards Dartmouth Cyber Security Group $11 MM
-
5/10/2007
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded Dartmouth College an $8.7 million grant for new studies on insider threats, privacy protection, and the economics of cyber security. The money will go to Dartmouth's Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection (I3P).
- Survey Said ...
-
5/10/2007
I look forward each year to the EDUCAUSE annual Current Issues Survey Report. There is always something new and interesting, be it the ways in which the survey instrument itself has been shaped to reflect the association’s view of the field or in the results of the survey.
- Carnegie Mellon To Deploy NeXpose
-
5/10/2007
Carnegie Mellon announced plans to deploy vulnerability management software from software developer Rapid7 for systems and networks at the university. The NeXpose software is designed to examine and analyze the cause of any problem.
- U Missouri Server Hack Exposes 22,396 SSNs
-
5/9/2007
The University of Missouri has reported that one of its databases was hacked and that the intruder responsible for the breach was able to obtain the names and social security numbers of staff members. This is the second data security breach at the University of Missouri this year.
- Report Outlines Higher Ed Concerns on VoIP
-
5/7/2007
A survey by the Association for Communications Professionals in Higher Education concluded that fewer than half of colleges and universities in North America have migrated to voice over IP networks, but many are readying conversions in the next six months to two years.
