Advanced Security Solutions in Higher Education
From the physical to the
technological, from harm to students or buildings to breach of confidential
information or identity theft, the list of imminent risk on college campuses
today is seemingly endless. Alarming news reports have revealed the physical
vulnerabilities, and data collected from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse shows
that more than 50 colleges and universities have fallen victim to an IT breach
already this year. Higher education is at a security risk crossroads, and
educational leaders must be aware of and implement best practices for securing
physical and logical assets.
In order to achieve this
balance cost-effectively, many college and university leaders are looking
towards advanced technology solutions that offer new capabilities. A new array
of vendor services now allow higher education institutions to maximize security
investments, including logical network security, identity management, intrusion
protection, and digital video surveillance (DVS). The important issue for
institutions is to recognize the challenge is not necessarily new products, but
a disciplined process for implementing new solutions to maximize their
investments.
Colleges and universities
are very open environments with many transient users plugging in to and out of
networks. This complexity requires constant monitoring and evaluation by
administrators and regulators. With limited financial and staffing resources,
many educational institutions struggle to secure and sustain an
educational IT system and its data against security breaches, natural
disasters, and other related incidents.
A
Wide Spectrum of Possibilities
To help safeguard the
privacy of data and systems, higher education institutions are looking to
develop solutions that protect intellectual capital, personal information, and
data through network and data security solutions, identity management, access
control, and IT assessments.
Just a few examples of
some recent campus IT security projects can help outline the spectrum of
challenges.
- A
European university of more than 22,000 students needed to improve security
measures for information such as student data and exam records.
- A
large, U.S.-based medical research university needed to improve its disaster
recovery capabilities and protect its scientific databases.
- A
university in Texas
needed help balancing academic freedom and protection from viruses, worms, and
malware.
- An
urban university wanted to lower the operating cost of campus video
surveillance while improving overall response and security levels.
The range of issues under
the safety and security umbrella can be quite large, which is why many vendors
recommend security assessments in order to help institutions prioritize their
challenges and direct their limited investment resources to the most important
areas.
Campus IT leaders have identified
security as the area with the most potential to grow in significance over the
next year, according to the 2007 EDUCAUSE Current
Issues Survey Report. Report authors John S. Camp, Peter B. DeBlois, and
the Current Issues Committee suggest that institutions large and small, public
and private need to address the development and implementation of security
infrastructure and campuswide security policies, awareness, and training. The Identity Theft Resource
Center attributes 28
percent of security breaches to the Education Industry. Education constituents
expect institutions to do better, and the potential liability issues from these
breaches have now gotten senior executive attention.
Confronting
the Enemy
While we seem locked in a
never-ending “arms race” with hackers and those trying to penetrate our IT
defenses, there are now a lot of options to protect IT resources without
sacrificing the open culture of education. New technologies provide both
proactive and ongoing analysis of weaknesses to help address them before a
breach occurs. More often than not, the answer is not simply products, but
improvements to methodologies and processes to make IT infrastructures more
secure. That’s the main reason vendors have developed deep services
capabilities, in addition to new products, to address these threats.
But the challenge in
security is not just IT infrastructure, as important it is. It is also securing
the physical assets and people of the institution. Campus safety is a top issue
with parents, students, and administrators. Fortunately, new solutions for
campus safety can now exploit the significant investment in IT infrastructure
that institutions have made over the years. These new solutions can both
improve service levels and lower operating costs.
Video
Surveillance Analytics Systems
For example, advanced
video surveillance analytics systems can help protect an institution’s physical
environment and the people within it. Smart surveillance systems are digital
video surveillance monitors that not only document an event in real time, but
can also provide real-time images via an Internet protocol (IP) network to make
the images immediately available to campus security, first responders,
community leaders, and/or law enforcement. The capture of data through smart
surveillance creates a more secure environment within the education institution
and the community in which it resides.
Leaders at St. John’s University
in New York City,
with a student population of more than 19,000 across three campuses, looked for
assistance in overhauling their aging surveillance system. Video surveillance
had been a key part of the 135-year-old institution’s capabilities for a number
of years, but leaders were looking to leverage new technologies and lower costs
while improving security capabilities to accommodate a growing resident and
commuter student population.
As St. John’s Vice President of Public Safety
Thomas Lawrence explains it, the school did not wish to replace the old system,
but rather perform the safety function more effectively through the application
of advanced technology. Before the overhaul, video surveillance would need to
be transferred to VHS, and then someone would need to sit down and run through
up to 72 hours of video to find a specific incident. University administrators
were hoping to find software that could help them do the monitoring and grow
the system’s capabilities.
After a thorough
evaluation, a complete, integrated systems solution was devised, including
design and implementation of a network-based integrated digital video system
using both existing and new cameras. St.
John’s was able to save a considerable amount of money
by keeping its existing cameras and adding to them a number of entirely new
capabilities such as instant replay of video without service interruption —
providing optimum security effectiveness around-the-clock. The overhauled
system can be integrated with other campus security applications, such as
card-key access and alarm and incident-management systems. Video or still clips
can be easily exported and system software can intelligently flag events of
interest (e.g., motion sensing).
University leaders
realized “this was a systems integration problem, not a video problem,” said
Walter Kerner, St. John’s
director of Network Services. The entire project took only four months, from
the signing of the contract to going live, and there was only five minutes of
downtime during the entire switchover.
The important point is
that decision makers need to look at the issues unique to their institution and
seek to capitalize on what they have, while directing their investment toward
what will make the most difference. Frequently, the best options may not be
off-the-shelf products, but a process-oriented services solution that best
addresses their needs.
Confronting
the Task
For most institutions, IT
and physical security are daunting tasks to take on. Rather than spending
countless hours and dollars trying to manage security challenges, however,
higher-education leaders can now turn to cost-effective, comprehensive
solutions. With so many different facets to consider on a college campus,
integrating physical security with IT is critical — and it can help
institutions stay ahead of the threats that surface everyday in higher
education. The key is to begin with a disciplined assessment of current status
and challenges, prioritize needed improvements, leverage existing capabilities,
and implement appropriate solutions to both infrastructure, as well as
processes.
Michael King is vice
president, Global Education Industry, for IBM Corporation. He can be contacted
at [email protected]
or 310/727-4200.