Article: "21st century university campuses: a haven for hackers and data thieves?"

[Brad Judy <Brad.Judy () COLORADO EDU>]

Here's a brief article from Ars Technica on data theft in higher
education.  For those not familiar, Ars is a general website for tech
geeks, but the owner is in academics, so there are more frequently
articles on higher education than other tech websites.  

This recent article raises the issue of identity data theft in higher
education:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060607-7012.html

While the quote from an IT admin at the end is rather anecdotal, I did
find the discussion interesting, particularly this comment by
"Semiapies":

"I'll note that the "Part of the reason for this is the fact that
universities, by their very nature, tend to be centers where openness of
information is encouraged, and convenience of access to this information
is seen as a positive thing" bit has precisely jack to do with slapdash
security when it comes to students' personal information kept by a
school. It's a non sequitor - you might as well try to blame dorm
burglaries on the need to have the university library open all day."

While the quote misses the correlation between security and historic
open network architectures in higher education, it's quite valid.  

A follow-up on the discussion by "Cretion" also hits this point:

"The problem is simply properly securing sensitive information. Just
because a community is more open doesn't mean that information is more
accessible. If anything, it shows schools are rather behind the curve on
proper security because that just costs more money. I don't know many
schools that have a proper staff of technical people, and hence, you get
security problems, but not because of a desire to be open."

While the article and discussion aren't any revelations to this group, I
found it interesting to see some thoughtful posts in the discussion.  

Brad Judy

Information Technology Services
University of Colorado at Boulder