Higher Education Groups Promote Cybersecurity Awareness

Colleges and universities across the country are disseminating materials and holding events during October to observe National Cyber Security Awareness Month. The EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force will also be releasing several new resources during the month of October designed to equip campuses with the tools necessary to increase awareness of cyber risks and vulnerabilities among faculty, staff, and students. The National Cyber Security Alliance and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security are partnering with industry and academia to spread the word about online safety by providing tips and resources, and by hosting special events designed specifically for home users, small businesses, and the education community.

In partnership with George Mason University, the Security Task Force has produced an executive awareness video, Cyber Security on Campus. The 15-minute video includes George Mason University President Alan Merten commenting on benchmarks for success: “I think it is more of a case of education plus attention. If you see that every time presidents, vice presidents, and deans get together that [cybersecurity] is part of the agenda, then we are making progress.” Similarly, Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, emphasizes, “I want the entire president’s leadership group to know which questions to raise regularly. If they understand…what questions to ask with enough sophistication to know when they’re being given serious, reasonable answers, then we’ve made necessary progress.” The video is available online from EDUCAUSE for streaming or downloading. In addition to the video, EDUCAUSE has gathered a corresponding set of materials for raising executive security awareness.

As one example of the higher education efforts to advance security awareness, Texas State University (TSU)-San Marcos held a Cyber Security Awareness Day on October 6. “Universities have a unique challenge to secure their infrastructure and data while providing many open systems for specific academic teaching and research,” said Elliott Franklin, information security analyst for TSU-San Marcos. “By offering short informational sessions and best practices from a wide variety of industry experts, we hope to encourage and provide a catalyst for proactive security from the end user to the system administrator.”

Indiana University (IU) will participate in National Cyber Security Awareness Month and encourage its university community to Keep IT Safe by hosting IT security certification sessions, holding IT panel discussions, and launching an eye-catching poster and postcard campaign that highlights timely IT-related security concerns. According to Michael McRobbie, IU’s vice president for research and information technology, “A solid security awareness program is critical to our overall security strategy and essential to ensuring the integrity and viability of everything we do and produce in the higher education and research communities. While we want members of the IU community to attend to IT security year-round, we are using the additional attention of National Cyber Security Awareness Month to do some specific things, such as partnering with the SANS Institute to offer an advanced computer security training workshop to Indiana’s educational, law enforcement, and nonprofit communities and launching a series of posters and postcards reminiscent of 1950s horror and sci-fi films to capture the attention of the university community.”

The University of Florida (UF) will host an Information Technology Security Awareness Day (ITSA Day) on October 12. Security experts from the FBI, SANS, Microsoft, Cisco, and others will present on popular security issues such as attack trends and identity theft. “Since ITSA Day started in 1998, university IT workers have greatly improved security of campus IT resources,” said Kathy Bergsma, UF’s information security manager. “We also value our relationship with the local community, so we make this event free and open to the public, and require no advanced registration. By streaming and recording the event, we strive to further expand audience to the Internet community. We are pleased to offer ITSA again this year to help continue the positive trend of improving IT security.”

The EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Security Task Force has created a Resource Kit for National Cyber Security Awareness Month and converted its popular security awareness CD into an online resource library. Several sessions at the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference, October 18–21 in Orlando, are also designed to promote National Cyber Security Awareness Month, including a half-day seminar entitled “Successful Approaches to Cybersecurity Awareness and Training”, a session entitled “Creating Executive Awareness About Information Security”, and a closing plenary panel entitled “Right and Wrong in Cyberspace.”

About EDUCAUSE

EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology. The current membership comprises more than 2,200 colleges, universities, and educational organizations, including 250 corporations, with 17,000 active members. Learn more about EDUCAUSE at www.educause.edu.

About Internet2

Led by more than 200 U.S. universities working with industry and government, Internet2 develops and deploys advanced network applications and technologies for research and higher education, accelerating the creation of tomorrow's Internet. Internet2 recreates the partnerships among academia, industry, and government that helped foster today’s Internet in its infancy. For more information, visit www.internet2.edu.