Survey finds IT security lacking at public schools
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Public school districts have experienced increasing levels of security breaches to their computer networks in the past year, but a new report says three-quarters of districts have inadequate physical and cybersecurity.
The 2009 School safety Index, issued by CDW Government, Inc. (CDW-G), reported an overall decline in schools' physical and cybersecurity scores. In the last 12 months, 55 percent of districts reported experiencing an IT breach, such as unauthorized user access, hacking or viruses, while 67 percent experienced a physical breach such as break-ins.
Most IT breaches originate internally - 41 percent from students and 22 percent from staff or employees, the report said. Districts' top IT and physical security barriers were a lack of budget, too few staff resources and the need for more security tools.
Bob Kirby, vice president K-12 education, CDW-G, said many districts are missing the opportunity to counter increased breaches by sharing best practices with other districts and engaging district administrators regularly on security priorities and investments.
Although 92 percent of districts are using some type of encryption to protect data, 40 percent said they spend just four hours or less per month reviewing questionable internet activity - revealing a gap in monitoring that could expose networks to security risks, the report said.
Related News:
Microsoft issues Internet Explorer security update - 11.3.2009
Microsoft on Monday issued a security bulletin that updates a previous patch for Internet Explorer to resolve two issues. The IE bug only affects users who already applied the earlier patch.
The Pirate Bay shutdown sends file swappers to malware sites - 11.3.2009
Illegal file-sharing torrent sites grew by 300 percent in the most recent quarter, after lawsuits forced copyrighted content-sharing site The Pirate Bay to close down, according to web security firm McAfee.
Mozilla upgrades web browser security in Firefox 3.6 - 11.2.2009
Mozilla developers unveiled the Firefox 3.6 beta web browser for download on Friday, giving developers a chance to test their add-ons and extensions for the product before the general release version.
ICANN international domain names could boost phishing gangs - 10.30.2009
ICANN, the body responsible for regulating the domain name system (DNS) for web addresses, plans to move ahead with international domain names using non-Latin alphabets, but a report by security researchers suggests this could help phishing gangs launch new attacks.
Mid-sized businesses lost average $43,000 in security breaches - 10.30.2009
Cybercriminals are targeting small and mid-sized businesses that lack proper network security with a range of malicious viruses and phishing attacks, but a new survey demonstrates the staggering cost.
|
