School system leaders never know when disaster may strike. Having a plan in place to protect vital data and systems is crucial. School system leaders need to be actively involved in crisis preparedness, planned response, and recovery to ensure student and staff safety and to make certain that all important operations, services, processes, and…

This article discusses how students use online role-play to collaborate and change real school policy. Playing different characters in an online role-play, students explore controversial aspects of Internet filtering and adopt a plan to change their school's policy. Through engaging in collaborative argumentation during their role-play, students…

Concerns about children's online safety have evolved from protecting them to focusing on encouraging positive social norms, transmitting effective skills, and encouraging students to be helpful allies. In fact, federal law now requires schools that receive funding to educate students about cyber safety. Nancy Willard integrates her expertise in…

This article discusses the implementation this year of the Department of Education's Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008 (HEOA), which requires accreditors to ensure that an institution that offers distance or correspondence education has a process in place to establish that a student who registers in a course or program is also the same…

Information security threats to educational institutions and their data assets have worsened significantly over the past few years. The rich data stores of institutional research are especially vulnerable, and threats from security breaches represent no small risk. New genres of threat require new kinds of controls if the institution is to prevent…

America faces many challenges in working together to restore the promise of economic growth and security for the country, U.S. families and the American worker. The challenges are both real and serious. Despite hopeful signs of economic recovery, America remains mired in the deepest jobs crisis since the 1930s. One out of every 12 Americans who…

According to a 2008 "Year in Review" report by Educational Security Incidents, an online repository that collects data on higher education security issues, the total number of security incidents reported at universities and colleges worldwide rose to 173 in 2008, a 24.5 percent increase over 2007. The number of institutions…

In this article, the author presents the top-10 list of campus computer-security risks he compiled based on several recent computing surveys and interviews with more than a dozen college-technology leaders. The list, ordered from least to most serious, is by no means scientific, but it gives a sense of where today's battle lines are--and why…

Privacy is a thing of the past. Monitoring is everywhere. If one is looking at this online, the author is sure that lots of information has been stored and linked to anyone about that action. Nevertheless, at least people can try to play with "their" minds and surf the web anonymously. In this article, the author discusses ways to try to hide…

This paper describes a competition-style of exercise to teach system and network security and to reinforce themes taught in class. The exercise, called NetSecLab, is conducted on a closed network with student-formed teams, each with their own Linux system to defend and from which to launch attacks. Students are expected to learn how to: 1) install…

This article presents the ninth annual EDUCAUSE Current Issues Survey results, which show a good deal of movement among the most critical challenges facing campus information technology leaders in 2008. Thirty-two percent (589) of 1,845 EDUCAUSE primary member representatives responded to an e-mail invitation to complete the web-based survey in…

School business administrators have long recognized the need for a workable data recovery plan regardless of cause. Yet many have not reassessed their current data backup and recovery capabilities, perhaps because they have not experienced a catastrophic failure. There are three reasons school business administrators may not realize or recognize…

Without specific education in online safety and security issues, putting any limitations on access could seem counter to what a librarian is trained to do. At a cybersecurity workshop sponsored by Washington Library Media Association (WLMA) last October, an informal show of hands from attending teacher-librarians uncovered a range of motivations…

Until this year, the Oregon Department of Education ran a central portal of thousands of learning resources that required all teachers and students to have an email address as authentication for security purposes. Because many districts didn't offer student email, the learning materials were not available to everyone. In April, Oregon became the…

Parents need to be aware of the dangers and the opportunities the cyber world offers. Video games are being used in the classroom. Commerce is increasingly taking place online and computers are indispensable in the workplace. A cyber-oriented child possesses some great advantages. The author urges parents to become experts in the cyber world so…