In a recent Center for Digital Education CDE survey of 139 higher education IT professionals, 36 percent said their campus had been subjected to a malicious code incident in the last yea
Trang 1How Secure is Your Campus Network?
Cybersecurity is a high priority on higher education campuses, but evolving malicious threats leave networks vulnerable Here’s how to get ahead
Introduction: The Double-Edged Threat
It’s a reality of education today: Students, staff and faculty
are bringing personal mobile devices to campus to access
educational resources These educational resources and apps
are increasingly stored in the cloud for anytime, anywhere
access and to help facilitate the sharing of information on a
campus and between distant campuses Despite the
advan-tages these advances bring, they also make campus networks
more vulnerable to cyber attacks Institutions therefore face a
double-edged threat as budgets and resources remain tight
and the sophistication of attacks continually increases
In a recent Center for Digital Education (CDE) survey of
139 higher education IT professionals, 36 percent said their
campus had been subjected to a malicious code incident in
the last year, and expected spam and phishing (70 percent)
as well as malware (61 percent) to be principal threats in the
year to come.1 And although 86 percent of those
respon-dents rated their institution’s ability to detect and thwart cyber
attacks as average or above average, the survey also revealed
many of those institutions don’t abide by network security
best practices
This issue brief examines what campuses should look for
in a network security solution that can scale over time to meet
the needs of a more digital higher education environment
Common Network Security Setbacks
Cybersecurity ranks near the top of the list of priorities
for 73 percent of CDE’s survey respondents, but the survey
found actual network security practices fall short due to some
common challenges
Legacy, siloed systems Outdated legacy systems often
found on university campuses are frequently siloed with
single-purpose functions layered on as they are needed over
time — this is especially true in the realm of security Such
configurations are not easily integrated with other systems
and are inefficient, making management and updates
complicated and costly In fact, 53 percent of CDE survey
respondents said incompatible legacy systems were a barrier
to more effective cybersecurity
Limited budgets Despite the recent economic uptick in
the U.S., government entities still have a tight rein on budgets
After adjusting for inflation, 48 of the 50 states — Alaska and
North Dakota are exceptions — spent less on education in
2014 than before the recession.2 The average state currently spends approximately 23 percent less per student per year than before the economic downturn Such budget constraints parallel the responses of CDE survey respondents who said the leading obstacle (81 percent) preventing them from implementing improved security measures is funding
Rapidly advancing networks College networks are
evolving and expanding at a rapid rate to accommodate the abundance of devices brought to campuses, video streaming, online courses and advanced research To meet this demand, many campuses are centralizing data centers, moving as much information as possible to the cloud and looking toward
100 Gbps networks in the near future Unfortunately, security often can’t keep pace with these network speeds, leaving networks vulnerable
How Big is the Threat?
Issue Brief
562REPORTED DATA
BREACHES
THERE WERE
AT 324 HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS BETWEEN
2005 AND 2014.
36%OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
IT PROFESSIONALS SAID THEIR CAMPUS WAS SUBJECTED TO A MALICIOUS CODE INCIDENT IN THE LAST YEAR.
70%EXPECT SPAM AND
PHISHING ATTACKS
TO BE PRINCIPAL THREATS IN THE NEXT YEAR, AND 61% FEEL THE SAME ABOUT MALWARE.
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Underwritten by:
An Effective Security Strategy
College campuses have thousands of users, endpoints
and applications active at any given time, so simply installing
one-off firewalls, anti-virus software and single-step
authenti-cation requirements are no longer enough to make a college
network secure
To combat network security threats, institutions need an
enterprise solution that offers layered protection and can scale
over time As institutions upgrade their network security
solu-tion, they should look for the following capabilities:
• Layered protection, including next-generation firewalls and
intrusion prevention, remote access control, Web and email
gateway filtering, and identity and access management
• A vendor that offers threat intelligence and a defense
network that constantly collects and analyzes new threats,
building counter-measures that are deployed in real time
• Performance that can scale as the network environment
grows via a multicore solution that can scan quickly at a
high throughput
• Centralized and simple management — with automatic moni-toring and reporting — that eases maintenance and frees staff
to focus on initiatives that help improve student outcomes
Conclusion: Combating the Threat
There were 562 reported data breaches at 324 higher education institutions between 2005 and 2014, according
to an EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) report.4 For higher education institutions, breaches can negatively impact the learning environment, cost a staggering amount of money and even present a legal liability Increasingly, institutions realize the importance of
an advanced network security solution Fifty-five percent
of CDE survey respondents say they plan to invest more
in network security over the next 12 months Directing this spending on an enterprise, layered approach to network security with an emphasis on efficacy, performance and cost efficiency will help ensure campuses are truly prepared for a technology-rich — and threat-filled — future
© 2015 e.Republic All rights reserved.
Endnotes
1 Center for Digital Education Network Security Survey, May 2015.
2 http://www.cbpp.org/research/states-are-still-funding-higher-education-below-pre-recession-levels
3 http://software.dell.com/documents/tuskegee-university-casestudy-29646.pdf
4 https://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ECP1402.pdf
Combating cyber attacks on campuses today requires new
secu-rity capabilities and practices Many institutions are turning
to encrypted Internet — a practice that can be effective for secure
data transfer, but can also sacrifice overall network performance
The computing overhead behind wide-scale scanning and encrypting
can actually cripple the system and bring the greater network to a
crawl — or worse
Tuskegee University near Montgomery, Ala., understood this
and took a more advanced approach to cybersecurity to protect its
nearly 3,200 students and 1,100 faculty and staff
Tuskegee’s network deflects up to one million malware and
phishing attacks each week, and until recently, this overwhelmed
the firewall Chief Information Officer Fred Judkins says, “It brought
our network to a crawl The firewall could not handle the threats
and volume of traffic.”
The network slowdown impacted both faculty and students, because instructors couldn’t download class materials In addition, the IT team could not keep up with the weekly software updates necessary for the 1,100 lab computers or the proliferation of student mobile devices “It would take 10 minutes to push out one simple change to an IP address,” says Judkins “We cannot wait that long.” The university ultimately implemented a next-generation network solution that heightened security, facilitated cross-platform mobility and revved up network performance “We have the ability to remotely and granularly designate what firewalls users can get to, what rules they can change and what they can see,” says Judkins “Our univer-sity president can view network traffic in real time We can set up automatic reports to be sent via email.” By consolidating network and mail filtering on the firewall, the university is saving up to $100,000 each year “It is unbelievably fast and simple,” says Judkins.3
Tuskegee University Boosts Network Security and Performance
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