The
Beach fights hackers
By
Karla Casillas
Summer Forty-Niner
City Editor
From
November 2004 to December 2005, Cal State
Long Beach has had more than 73 million
network intrusions and attacks, according
to the Network Intrusion Prevention Report.
The number of attempts to hack into the network went up from last year. Sixty-one
million attempts were recorded last year. The attempts, according to the report,
increased during the summer.
Steve La, director of Network Services, said he does not know why there is
so much activity during the summer.
Despite millions of intrusions and attacks, the core campus servers that contain
the most sensitive data have not had such problems, according to La.
“Our system and security team are working hard to protect the university
network and computer systems,” La said. He said CSULB has done well compared
to other CSU’s and hasn’t had any major outbreaks.
A Computer Emergency Response Team called Beach-CERT was created in 2003 by
La. It is a “security swat team” that consists of more than 70
technical support staff, and network administrators who volunteer their time
to help protect campus users.
“[The Beach-CERT team] meet once a month to review our campus security
status and focus on the tasks that need to be done to secure and improve our
campus computer systems,” La said.
Besides Beach-CERT, systems and network administrators responsible for important
services are properly trained. CSULB also uses deployed security systems, which
detects and blocks attacks from not just hackers, but also from worms and viruses.
Software is also used to protect the campus systems and networks. “CSULB
utilizes many layers of security technologies,” La said.
He said intrusion prevention systems and firewalls were set up in 2003 to protect
the campus network and data infrastructure. A central antivirus system was
also developed to protect desktop computers on campus. In 2005, a privacy encryption
was also set up. “[The encryption] help protect sensitive data stored
in university desktop computers and servers by encrypting the data and the
hard drives,” La said.
La said hackers are drawn to universities because they are easier to hack into,
have open policies and high performance network bandwidth. Universities have
a more open environment, where students are free to surf the net and do research.
Hackers use applications to scan for vulnerabilities and look for the least
resistant path. The least resistant path doesn’t have enough security
and hackers can get through easily. The CSULB system detects those possible
intrusions before the hackers join the system.
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