Challenges to Network Security on College Campuses

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2011

Department

School of Business

Abstract

With the growth of hacking, denial of service (DoS) attacks, virus/worm propagation, and other modes of computer crime, network security has become a growing challenge in all types of organizations throughout the United States and the rest of the world. With the more open nature of libraries, secondary schools, and colleges/universities, cybercriminals are looking increasingly at these locations as a point from which to launch their attacks.

In response to these increasing attacks, organizations are beginning to look at areas to improve the protection of their Information Technology infrastructure. However, due to current economic conditions and the hierarchy of needs on most higher education campuses, these institutions are falling behind their commercial counterparts in providing, at least, minimal protection for their systems. While most higher education campuses are behind the norm on computer security, two-year campuses are especially vulnerable to network security threats. Their open labs, limited staff, and limited budgetary resources make them a desirable target for the cybercriminal.

This paper focuses on the challenges that these institutions have faced in attempting to protect their data and the network infrastructure from illegal activity. Data was collected from over fifty institutions from seven states. These state were: Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas. Results generated from these two-year institutions indicated that, while network security has become a priority over the past five years, there exists a significant discrepancy between the security measures thought to be necessary by the IT administration and the actual safeguards that were currently in place, or even planned for implementation. Research also identified several of the challenges that have caused this discrepancy between network security needs and those already in place. These included lack of staff, lack of funding, and lack of upper management support.

First Page

37

Last Page

42

Volume

27

Issue

2

ISSN

19374771, 19374763

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