Academic technologists at Lynn University (Florida) learned the hard way just how important a disaster recovery plan can be. Back in 2005, when Hurricane Wilma walloped the region with driving rain and 120 mile-per-hour winds, the storm debilitated Lynn's IT department, causing damage and flooding that thwarted the campus network for nearly two…

The Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requires any school or library receiving funding from the federal E-Rate program to deploy web filtering technology to prevent users from viewing objectionable material while they are using the institution's computers. However, opponents of web filtering legislation question whether or not mandated…

In this article, the author offers six best practices for physical and data security convergence. These are: (1) assess the cable plant; (2) choose wisely; (3) be patient; (4) engineer for high availability; (5) test the converged network to make sure it works; and (6) don't forget the humans.

With K-12 students seeming to, at all times, have one foot in the real world and one in the virtual, school districts are starting to acknowledge a new collective responsibility: to teach kids what it means to be a good digital citizen and how to go about being one. The movement to address and characterize digital citizenship originated in the UK,…

Colleges and universities can never be too prepared, whether for physical attacks or data security breaches. A quick data slice of over 7,000 US higher ed institutions, using the Office of Postsecondary Education's Campus Security Data Analysis Cutting Tool Website and cutting across public and private two- and four-year schools, reveals some…

In this article, the author presents the latest wireless equipments available in market. For starters, wireless networks offer mobility and flexibility: users of laptops, PDAs, tablet PCs, and wireless Voice over IP telephones can move freely about campus while staying connected to the Internet. There are two kinds of wireless networks: ad-hoc, or…

Building access control (BAC)--a catchall phrase to describe the systems that control access to facilities across campus--has traditionally been handled with remarkably low-tech solutions: (1) manual locks; (2) electronic locks; and (3) ID cards with magnetic strips. Recent improvements have included smart cards and keyless solutions that make use…

Nowadays, college and university auxiliary services departments are turning to text messaging types of technologies to move a host of programs and offerings into the mobile environment. A July 2007 study by Youth Trends indicated that 95 percent of college freshmen come to school with a cell phone or other handheld device, and 78 percent of them…

October is national Cyber Security Awareness Month, and for the world of higher education, that means it is time to take a look at defense systems and plan for the future. Clearly, more planning is needed now than ever before. According to the majority of IT market research firms, phishing and identity theft have leapfrogged spam and spyware as…