White House report urges heightened cybersecurity

On Friday the White House released its plan to combat cyber-terrorism in a report recommending improved security measures for colleges and universities. The plan is one part of a comprehensive strategy also aimed at businesses, government agencies and other organizations using cyberspace.

The report may also mean more funding for related cybersecurity research that some University professors could pursue.

The plan, in development since shortly after Sept. 11, asserts that many institutes of higher education have especially vulnerable systems because they allow more open access to powerful computing networks.

Recommendations

Recommendations to schools include forming cooperative information sharing and analysis centers and empowering chief information officers to institute new cybersecurity measures.

OIT officials were unavailable for comment last night, but in the past year the department hired a new information security officer, Anthony Scaturro, and asked most students to change their UNIX passwords —many of which were still the last eight digits of the students' social security numbers.

Diane Auer Jones, University director of government affairs, said that at a recent seminar run by White House and secret service personnel both password security and effective firewalls were mentioned as crucial to establishing increased security at universities.

A major part of the President's plan, titled "The National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," called for an extensive new research initiative to advance cybersecurity training in both professional and academic contexts, including graduate and postdoctoral research along with faculty development in the burgeoning field.

Auer Jones said that in the past an unreliable flow of funding limited academic involvement in the area, but more money dedicated to research by last year's Cyber Security Research and Development Act would "creat[e] a stable funding stream for academicians" and "grow this profession."

Most University involvement with the new measures, she said, will be through the American Council on Education and the Association of American Universities, which has a task force dedicated to homeland security issues including cybersecurity.

University spokeswoman Lauren Robinson-Brown '85 said the cybersecurity field "does look like the type of research our faculty members would be interested in."