|
Protecting Yourself Against Cyberspace
Attacks
By Anita Warren
In an era characterized by easy access to all kinds of information,
protecting private information has become an escalating challenge, especially
for institutions that store a range of sensitive data. For Dartmouth, the
biggest threats come from outside the College, says Brad Noblet, director of
computing Technical
Services.
“We get a variety of folks outside Dartmouth — i.e., off the Internet — who
constantly test and attack our machines on campus, searching for
vulnerabilities. These folks are primarily interested in getting access to
machines on campus to be able to sell, or serve up, music files, video files —
all types of information — so they don’t have to pay an ISP,” he says. “A
second kind of threat comes from people who are trying to gather information
for malicious use, such as credit card information, Social Security numbers,
things like that that they can use to their advantage.”
To meet these challenges, Peter
Kiewit Computing Services has developed a multi-layered strategy that will
be rolled out this fall. The layers begin with the creation of a secure central
document server on which members of the Dartmouth community can store sensitive
information more effectively than on their individual computers. That
information will travel from computer to server on an encrypted communications
path, which, according to Noblet, is almost impossible to decode.
In addition, all Dartmouth personnel authorized to access the core Dartmouth
infrastructure, such as file servers, will use
electronic tokens — and will need to know the passwords that unlock those
tokens — to obtain the information they seek.
“The fact that you physically have to have something in your possession
before you can get onto the inner sanctum of our network is going to go an
awfully long way toward preventing illicit access,” says Noblet. “For people
sitting outside of Dartmouth to reach inside without having this physical
device is going to be virtually impossible.”
One vulnerability in security thus far has been the College’s public
Internet address, its direct connection to the Internet, which potentially
allows outside users to view the movements of Dartmouth personnel on the Net.
So Computing Services is also instituting a filter that blocks such peeping and
prevents outsiders from “snipping” information. Although the new filter
essentially isolates Dartmouth users from the Internet, it does not affect a
Dartmouth user’s ability to access and use the Net.
Noblet says the new security measures will be introduced across campus this
September. In the meantime, he says, “there are a variety of things that people
will need to know, such as how to authenticate, how to obtain the necessary
tool (i.e., token) to authenticate, and whether they have an environment that
is utilizing sensitive information that’s being protected.” Computing Services
will work with individual Dartmouth offices this summer to communicate the new
measures and prepare for their introduction this fall.
Photos: comstock.com. Photo composite: Jay Collier.
|
