Locked Down Not Out: A Swarm of Portable Technologies Is Creating Security Headaches for School Districts, as They Must Wrestle, with Opposing Needs: How to Protect the Network from Unauthorized Use While Still Keeping It Accessible to Staff and Students

IT IS AN IRONY lost on few district CIOs and tech directors that new technologies designed to make it easier for students and teachers to access computing resources have made the job of securing those resources lot harder. There was time when all the devices that connected to an organization's network were owned and managed by the organization--in fact, they never left the grounds. Nowadays, not only do the so-called endpoints (laptops, PDAs, and mobile phones) have antennas and legs, the network itself is linked to the whole world through the internet. Although traditional security approaches--firewalls, anti-spyware solutions, virus scanners--are still essential, they are predicated on model that is fading: networks with boundaries that can be secured, fenced, and protected by virtual software moat. High bandwidths swarming with connected but untethered endpoints have created what amounts to borderless network. Throw in some tools and applications that emphasize peer-to-peer sharing and new generation of thumb-sized, removable storage media, and you have an environment that the conventional solutions alone simply can't protect. The problem with traditional, perimeter-based security methods is twofold: First, they can stifle the educational mission that district networks were created to encourage. Firewalls can thwart hackers, but they can also prevent staff and students from accessing online tools or information. Desktop lockdown measures can keep virus-laden applications off the but they can also keep teachers from trying out new software. forget the serendipitous teachable moment, when teacher might need immediate access to website, or the ability to load some software or adjust student's desktop. Furthermore, the siege mentality behind these solutions can lead districts to create what cybersecurity analysts at the Consortium for School Networking call data tombs of protected but inaccessible information. Second, these approaches tend to provide inadequate defenses against modern security threats, such as USB devices and memory sticks, which are potential sources of infection, as well as handy and easily concealed storage for theft; instant messaging, through which variety of suspect files may be introduced to the network; and peer-to-peer file sharing programs (Kazaa, Gnutella, BitTorrent), which clog up the system and can't be blocked at the firewall. With all of these emerging threats, security can no longer be considered checkbox item--you can't just pick up copy of Norton AntiVirus at your local Best Buy and mark security off your list. To cope with an increasingly permeable districts are turning to strategies and solutions that protect at its point of use. The ability to enforce set of policies on the devices that connect with the while managing the identities of the users of those devices, is fast becoming must-have security capability. Managing the Endpoints The term endpoint security once referred to the process of safeguarding the end-user devices managed by an IT organization--literally, the points at which the organization's network ended. Nowadays, with so many so-called foreign endpoints connecting to the network--devices outside the organization's dominion, such as BlackBerry or personal laptop--endpoint security strategies focus more on controlling network access. Both staff and students expect to be able to come in with their own computers or handhelds and plug in to the network, says Jeremy Hobbs, CIO of Ontario's Upper Canada District School Board. And they find it difficult to imagine that we'd have any kind of problem with that. The UCDSB is rural district composed of 100 elementary and secondary public schools distributed over an area about three times the size of Connecticut. The district recently completed server consolidation project, which was followed by what Hobbs describes as a relative explosion of PC use in the field as growing number of its approximately 40,000 network users began connecting with laptops and PCs not managed by the IT staff, which posed significant risks to the network. …

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