Campus Security Report Card: C for Effort

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Security Research

Campus Security Report Card: C for Effort

10/30/2007

By David Nagel

On the administration side, IT pros cite as significant barriers lack of financial commitment, lack of commitment to policy enforcement, lack of funding for training programs, and lack of awareness.

Said the report, "Campus IT security has not improved in three years, and critical data losses continue to put the entire community at risk. Administrators bear the responsibility of taking the lead to unify and enforce security policies and procedures across campuses, colleges, and departments."

On the faculty side of things, lack of awareness tops the list of concerns, followed by an expectation on the part of faculty that exceptions will be made for individuals.

And, on the student side, disregard for rules tops the list of concern, followed by lack of awareness and personal devices in use on the network.

"Student and faculty lack of awareness continues to plague IT departments," the report said. "IT security education should be considered a first line of defense to improve campus security--with the funding and administrative support to affect real change."

Security Measures & Convergence
Despite the apparent lack of security improvement over the last three years, IT managers and directors have not been standing still. High percentages of colleges have taken measures to improve information security, as seen in the chart below.

The perception among IT managers, however, is that the administration does not place a high emphasis on data (or physical) security on their campuses. Fifty-six percent said that the administration considers physical security solutions "not important" or only "somewhat important." And 54 percent said the administration considers IT security solutions to be not or only somewhat important. Six percent rank physical security as the No. 1 priority, while 8 percent rank IT security as the No. 1 priority. Thirty-five percent of administrators, according to IT professionals, place both data security and physical security among their top-5 priorities.

As far as physical/data security convergence goes, 52 percent of respondents said they spent the same amount of time or less time (including 20 percent no time at all) integrating physical and information security compared with last year. Thirty-eight percent spent more time this year than last integrating physical and data security. (The remainder did not respond.)

Respondents were offered an opportunity to grade their own infrastructure's ability to support "new IT security and physical technology solutions" (convergence). The plurality gave themselves a B (39 percent). Fifteen percent gave themselves an A. Only 3 percent gave themselves a failing mark, and 10 percent gave themselves a D. Thirty-two percent gave themselves a C.