Re: Web Kiosks

[Dan Updegrove <updegrove () MAIL UTEXAS EDU>]

Mark and colleagues,

I think we owe it to the Internet, to our overstressed ISO staffs, and to
our PR/legal departments to be very aggressive in protecting our networks.
Since most forward-thinking campuses have, or are pursuing:

        - Authenticated kiosks in public locations, such as student unions
        - Authenticated wireless clouds in similar locations for
laptop/PDA users
        - Authenticated network jacks in classrooms, library carrels, and
reading rooms

there should be no lack of Internet/campus net access for our students,
faculty, and staff.

This leads me to conclude that the commercial kiosks are primarily for
outsiders to reach the Internet. Not clear to me why we should devote any
campus bandwidth or security management resources to the general public,
especially since we are having such a hard time managing both bandwidth and
security for our primary constituency!

I don't think it should be a Student Union's right to re-sell campus
network access. If the network is properly "owned" by the central IT group,
I can't imaging any rational IT group doing this.

My two cents,
Dan


At 10:00 AM 8/8/2003, Bruhn, Mark S. wrote:
> Their claim is that it's easy (and it is, really) to completely isolate
> these from the rest of the campus network.  They say that this is what
> most other campuses that have installed them have done, but they haven't
> been asked the questions we asked, or presented with the issues we
> presented, before.
>
> Isolating them from our network might protect our technical
> infrastructure, but that doesn't address what might be done from them
> against, say, UT-Austin, or deter fraud on e-Bay, or whatever.  Since they
> carry campus IPs, any abuse by anyone would obviously come back to us.
>
> The campus gets a flat payment from the vendor each year.
>
> M.
>
>
> --
> Mark S. Bruhn, CISSP, CISM
>
> Chief IT Security and Policy Officer
> Interim Director, Research and Educational Networking Information Sharing
> and Analysis Center (ren-isac () iu edu)
>
> Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO
> Indiana University
> 812-855-0326
>
> Incidents involving IU IT resources: it-incident () iu edu
> Complaints/kudos about OVPIT/UITS services: itombuds () iu edu
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Updegrove [mailto:updegrove () MAIL UTEXAS EDU]
> Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2003 11:53 PM
> To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Web Kiosks
>
> Mark & colleagues,
>
> Not clear to me why any campus would desire -- or permit -- such
> wide-open, unauthenticated (right?) access. Aside from some sort of
> advertising revenue sharing (right?), this looks like a total loser from a
> security and network management perspective.
>
> Dan
>
>
> At 05:33 PM 8/7/2003, Bruhn, Mark S. wrote:
>
> > Specifically, kiosks accessible to anyone, placed on campus, by a company
> > called Nanonation.
> >
> > I just met with our Student Union folks, and they have contracted with
> > this company to place 5 or 6 of these in our Union.  They allow web
> > access to anything, anywhere.  It's a given that we would isolate these
> > from the rest of our network.  But, there are issues about what people
> > can do from these, using/against external sites.  When I described to the
> > Union staff what this could mean, in order to make sure they know what
> > they're getting into, they also became very concerned.  Especially when I
> > described that other areas have chosen to install some level of
> > authentication (such as the Library), and that these devices will most
> > likely become the new haven for nefarious-deed-doers (those that have
> > migrated to the county library as we installed authentication on campus
> > may migrate back!)
> >
> > This company says they have 27 colleges and universities as
> > customers.  They listed a few, and will send me the rest -- I start with
> > the Big Ten campuses they mentioned:  Michigan State, Northwestern, Ohio
> > State, Purdue is apparently negotiating.  Others were Penn and Kansas.
> >
> > I wondered if I could get a sense of  1) how many security officers know
> > about these types of kiosks on their campuses, and 2)  if so, do you know
> > what the thinking was related to security and abuse?  How were those
> > concerns handled or were they explicitly recognized and accepted?
> >
> > If you want to reply to me, I can sanitize and summarize for the lists.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > M.
> >
> > --
> > Mark S. Bruhn, CISSP, CISM
> >
> > Chief IT Security and Policy Officer
> > Interim Director, Research and Educational Networking Information Sharing
> > and Analysis Center (ren-isac () iu edu)
> >
> > Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and CIO
> > Indiana University
> > 812-855-0326
> >
> > Incidents involving IU IT resources: it-incident () iu edu
> > Complaints/kudos about OVPIT/UITS services: itombuds () iu edu


VP  for Information Technology          Phone (512) 232-9610
The University of Texas at Austin       Fax (512) 232-9607
FAC 248 (Mail code: G9800)              d.updegrove () its utexas edu
P.O. Box 7407                                   http://wnt.utexas.edu/~danu/
Austin, TX 78713-7407

**********
Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Discussion Group discussion list can be found at 
http://www.educause.edu/cg/.