Security Task Force Announcements and security

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM)...but it's never too soon to start planning your campus events!!! We encourage you to consider ways that you can raise awareness among your faculty, staff, and students, and invite you to help promote NCSAM. For further suggestions, please consult the Resource Kit for National Cyber Security Awareness Month, developed by the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Security Task Force.

Many colleges and universities are already planning events or developing awareness resources for NCSAM that we would like to highlight as part of higher education's ongoing efforts to increase awareness within our community. We've already started a list of institutions that will be holding events in October 2007. Please share the URL or plans for your NCSAM-related initiatives with the Security Discussion Group or send us an e-mail so your institution's plans can be included.

From time to time, EDUCAUSE partners with the Center for Internet Security (CIS) on the development of new benchmarks. Below is an announcement regarding some new CIS activities.  Please consider participating.

Note: EDUCAUSE Institutional Members receive a 50 percent discount on the fee they pay to become members of CIS. 

The Center for Internet Security(CIS) is beginning work on several new benchmarks and would like to invite the members of the higher edducation community to participate in our consensus process.

For those of you new to CIS, we are a not-for-profit, end-user group that develops security guides, which we call benchmarks, by bringing together teams of experts who discuss security recommendations made in a draft.  These teams work via teleconference and email lists to reach consensus on the best security recommendations for a particular platform.  This process has proven very effective at creating detailed and useful benchmarks, while providing excellent opportunities for all involved to interact with their peers.

The key findings and roadmap for ECAR's new research study, Safeguarding the Tower: IT Security in Higher Education 2006, are now publicly available. This study not only assesses the current condition of IT security practice, but documents changes in practice over time among a constant set of respondents. Please note that the full study is available to ECAR subscribers and through purchase.

We would like to thank Jack Suess (Vice President of Information Technology & CIO, UMBC) for his 3 years of service as a co-chair and 6 years of service as a member of the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force.

We would also like to welcome Pete Siegel (Vice Provost, Information & Educational Technology, UC-Davis), who begins his 3-year term as co-chair of the Security Task Force. He will serve alongside Joy Hughes (CIO & Vice President, Information Technology, GMU), a co-chair since 2004.

The September/October EDUCAUSE Review, now available online, includes a special focus section on Privacy & Security. Featured articles include:

• Privacy & Security: An Overview by Rodney Petersen and Steve Worona
• The Privacy and Security Policy Vacuum in Higher Education by Fred H. Cate
• The Continuing Evolution of Effective IT Security Practices by John Voloudakis
• A Unified Approach to Information Security Compliance by M. Peter Adler
• Privacy Protection and Compliance in Higher Education: The Role of the CPO by Lauren Steinfeld and Kathleen Sutherland Archuleta
• Safeguarding Information Assets in Higher Education: The Role of the CSO by Rodney Petersen

October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month (NCSAM). The EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force would like to encourage you to consider ways you can raise awareness among your faculty, staff, and students, and invite you to help promote NCSAM. For further suggestions, please consult the Resource Kit for National Cyber Security Awareness Month, developed by the Security Task Force's Awareness and Training Working Group.

Additional EDUCAUSE resources include:

• NCSAM Sample Kit
• Cybersecurity Awareness Resource Library
  
• EDUCAUSE Security Awareness Resource Center

Additional National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) resources include:

• NCSAM Toolkit
• NCSAM Web Banners

Many colleges and universities are already planning events or developing awareness resources for NCSAM that the Security Task Force would like to highlight as part of higher education's ongoing efforts to increase awareness within our community. A list of institutions holding events in 2006 is currently available online. We would like to update this list with additional events that will be held in October 2006. Please share the URL or plans for your NCSAM-related initiatives with the participants of the Security Discussion Group or send an e-mail to: Security-Task-Force@educause.edu.