Universities are naturally more free-wheeling places than the corporate environment, with the collegiate "live and let live" attitude making IT campus administrators reluctant to press for mandatory security controls on student computers.
Students, after all, are paying customers, not employees getting a paycheck, and the idea of forcing students -- who often own their own laptops -- to do anything in particular is often seen as quixotic.
But with the waves of computer worms --Blaster, SQL Slammer, Welchia, and so forth--disrupting college campus networks, IT administrators show signs they're ready to take a different tact. Some are making it mandatory for students to run corporate-style anti-virus software on their personal computers. Temple University's chief information security officer, Ariel Silverstone, recently discussed how his university is going to do just that.
"We're going to make anti-virus software free but mandatory for anyone who gets an IP address from us, whether employee, faculty or student," said Silverstone. "You have to get an IP address to get connected to the campus. Now, the main goal is to protect the servers and computers." He reckons the university has about 14,000 IP-based devices attached to its network.
The impetus to make anti-virus software mandatory for students along with others on campus stems from the fact that 50% of all security incidents on campus are related to computer viruses and worms, Silverstone said.
"Machines are compromised and shut down by this," he said. The cost to de-bug machines and cope with service calls from viruses is skyrocketing. That's one reason the IT staff has gotten the backing from the campus administration to support the cost of providing free software to students and requiring them to use it.
Silverstone, who said his previous job was working as a global business manager at KPMG, said he prepared a product checklist as he began the contract negotiation process with about eight vendors. After a competitive procurement process, Temple ended up selecting the Symantec anti-virus suite in a contest where Network Associates and Trend Micro were narrowly edged out in a final review.
"Cost was decidedly not a factor," Silverstone noted, pointing out that several other factors, such as the automated update capability and technical and helpdesk support, were important in completing the negotiations for the three-year contract.
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