Guide Provides Effective IT Security Practices for Higher Education
The EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force has released the Effective Security Practices Guide for the higher education community, which provides practical approaches to preventing, detecting and responding to IT security problems in a wide range of higher education environments. The guide (online at www.educause.edu/security/guide) is the result of a collaborative effort involving college and university information security professionals from institutions such as Brown University, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Notre Dame and Yale University. In addition, the guide balances the need for security with an open, collaborative networking environment and low-cost solutions.
As a primer to establishing a comprehensive IT security program on campus, the guide contains resources on where to begin, including awareness, policies and risk assessment, as well as detailed descriptions of tools for implementing a security strategy. The guide covers topics such as network and host vulnerability assessment, security architecture design, network and host security implementations, intrusion and virus detection, incident response, as well as encryption and authentication. It also links to more than 30 effective practices and solutions contributed by members of the higher education community.
This article originally appeared in the 04/01/2004 issue of THE Journal.