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Crash Course: Information Security at Universities

How do universities cope each fall when students stream back to campus with infected, unpatched PCs? CISOs say it's (almost) all about the education.

Gartner's Pescatore maintains that will be a tricky order; tomorrow's employees likely face a different set of awareness issues than today's. "In corporate America, we have 37-year-olds still clicking on attachments, where many college kids today came of age already knowing not to click on a virus. They're used to spam, and they know not to trust e-mail addresses," he observes. "On the other hand, they've grown up in an age where they don't see file-sharing and intellectual property theft as a problem."

During the back-to-school season, when already boisterous students are being instructed in all kinds of safety issuesincluding sex, drugs and alcohol, as well as physical safetyit can be doubly hard to get the digital safety message heard at all. So, university CISOs frequently find themselves acting more like party planners than security personnel, sponsoring everything from Ye Olde Computer Faires to fraternity and sorority lectures, from writing articles for the student paper to setting up the ever-reliable folding tables in dormitory entranceways.

At GWU, Trivisani has worked with Security Awareness, a vendor of awareness tools and products, to develop a monthly series of campuswide posters designed to capture students' and faculty attention in an offbeat way. (One shows a toothbrush and asks, "Would you share this?" Another, on identity theft, comes with a built-in mirror.) At Brown, Sadler tries to utilize student workers to reach out to their peers whenever possible, and has been known to fall back on the timeless neon-colored flyer taped to the dormitory door, advertising the fact that the help desk is up and running.

In the waning dog days of August, there isn't a security officer on a campus anywhere who isn't fervently hoping to avoid a repeat of last year's firestorm, but many say they're wiser and more prepared for having weathered the storm, and anxious to kick off the new year "in something other than crisis mode," as GWU's Trivisani puts it.

"Our overarching goal is awareness," she sums up. "These students will be moving on to corporate America someday, and we hope that when they do, they're more aware of their responsibilities and know how to protect themselves."