| >I'm from a small liberal arts college and I am trying to fight a political
| >battle with a few faculty to implement a firewall at our site. The
| >computer science faculty at our college believe that security is only a
| >hindrance and that a firewall will hamper their "academic freedom".
| The other thought is that you can make a case that a firewall can save
| money. Without a firewall, one has to ensure that all of the campus
| computers are secure on a daily basis. With a firewall, you can reduce
| your zone of risk to the firewall machines. Security for campus machines
| is still important. However, without a firewall, the University is relying
I've been working closely with my alma mater, Simon's Rock,
which is just such a small liberal arts college, on security issues.
There, we expected some threat from the outside, but couldn't justify
the expense of a PC based firewall + administrating it without a
demonstrated outside threat.
It turns out that the big problem has not been external, but
local. Quite a few students have attempted to break in. I strongly
suspect that local attacks will be much more of a problem at small
schools. Often, there isn't very much worth breaking into from the
point of view of outsiders. This is the opposite of large, well known
institutions like AT&T or banks, or even MIT, where the target has
interesting stuff on their computers.
At companies, the employer has control over every employee,
and has a variety of disciplinary actions that they can take, up to
and including firing &/or suing employees who violate their security
policies. At a school, the institution has much less control over the
students. Expulsions for hacking are close to unheard of, although I
suspect that some will occur soon.
| I like Marcus' suggestion. I wonder if this issue has to be raised to a
| higher faculty level (e.g., President), since the potential damage may
| embarrass the University as a whole.
I agree that the issues should be raised with the top levels
of the administration, not because of embarrassment, but because the
school should have a clear cut policy directive that comes from the
top, that the administration is willing to stand behind about what to
do with your student hackers when you catch them.
Again, I think a firewall, while it may be useful, fails to
address the big problem that you will see with a small college, which
is students with too much time on their hands breaking in.
Adam
--
Adam Shostack adam @
bwh .
harvard .
edu
Politics. From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small,
annoying bloodsucker.
References:
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