EDUCAUSE Review Articles and Data Security

Two of the entries on the long list of data breaches in higher education are Georgetown University and UCLA. Timothy Lance recently talked with the IT policy officers at these two institutions to identify some of the policy implications of handling data breaches.

"When is higher education going to get serious about safeguarding the private information of students,
faculty, and staff?"

The author states that poor data protection it isn't an issue of technology but of the inability to instill personal accountability.

By adopting a unified approach to information security compliance, higher education institutions not only can effectively satisfy the requirements of the growing number of state and federal laws and industry regulations but also can address identified risks and improve the security of their information assets.

U.S. colleges and universities possess an exceptional volume and variety of personal information about students, employees, and others, yet they continue to lag behind industry, government, and higher education institutions in other countries in voluntarily protecting that information.

Information security is an increasingly important institutional issue that is not just the responsibility of the CIO - it is everyone's responsibility.

More and more universities and colleges are concerned as news of leaks of personal data involving like institutions has occurred. This article discusses policy development around the notification, treatment and prevention of these events.

The author discusses data quality issues and how a university can determine whether they need to improve the quality of their data.