The Internet is the world's largest knowledge common and the information source of first resort. Much of this information is open and freely available. However, there are organizations and companies today that are trying to close off the Internet commons and make it proprietary. These are the "copyright controllers." The preservation of the…

In the past three years, higher education institutions have made a number of moves to secure their critical systems and protect their users, resulting in a marked change in the techniques used to combat security threats. Today, continued progress may depend on the development of an enterprise IT security program. (Contains 10 notes.)

In the last decade, Internet provision has become widespread within schools in many economically developed countries. Proponents of such technology have stressed the potential benefits to be gained from innovative teaching and learning opportunities. Yet, herein purity and danger are seen to co-exist, with unregulated "pollutants"…

This paper introduces several hands-on projects that have been used to motivate students in learning various computer networking concepts. These projects are shown to be very useful and applicable to the learners' daily tasks and activities such as emailing, Web browsing, and online shopping and banking, and lead to an unexpected byproduct,…

The Eighth Annual EDUCAUSE Current Issues Survey asked campus information technology leaders to rate the most critical IT challenges facing them, their campuses, and/or their systems. Four findings associated with all respondents to this year's survey merit special mention. First, for the 2007 survey, the CIC decided to split a key issue choice…

This report presents an evaluation of the general controls over the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) information system maintained and operated by a contractor for the U.S. Department of Education (ED), which administers FFELP. The evaluation found that ED's general controls over the FFELP information system did not adequately protect…

In December 1996 UNESCO commissioned the Australian Broadcasting Authority to conduct a pilot study which considered a range of online issues; this report outlines the findings of the pilot study, based on data collected between February and May 1997 and updated in July 1997. The objective is to identify the main types of Internet content which…

This document provides general information on computer viruses, how to help protect a computer network from them, measures to take if a computer becomes infected. Highlights include the origins of computer viruses; virus contraction; a description of some common virus types (File Virus, Boot Sector/Partition Table Viruses, Trojan Horses, and…

Provides an overview of the electronic journal market and focuses on publishers doing innovative projects. Discusses predominate market models; publishers and the Internet; issues surrounding electronic journals: pricing, security, electronic page layout, copyright, backfile availability, reliability, and accessibility. Highlights selected…

Presents an overview of the security architecture of the IP multimedia core network subsystem (IMS) of the third generation mobile system, known in Europe as UMTS. Discusses IMS security requirements; IMS security architecture; authentication between IMS user and home network; integrity and confidentiality for IMS signalling; and future aspects of…

Describes an educational experiment at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, Scotland) in which 40% of the mathematics assessment for the students' first year was undertaken by a computer program. Discusses aspects of security, human-computer interface, and educational matters such as partial credit, and presents implications for the future.…

Presents guidelines developed by the ICOLC (International Coalition of Library Consortia) regarding vendor contracts and negotiations that involve electronic information resources. Highlights include content issues, including HTML, use of printers, and use of multimedia; and platform issues, including system architecture, access control, security…

Discusses advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet for delivering teaching modules and makes recommendations for successful use of the Internet. Highlights include the availability of information at all times and from remote locations, multimedia capabilities, infrastructure needed, security issues, updating, needed skills, and…

Outlines initiatives for government agencies to help mitigate risks of the year-2000 computer problem. Highlights include courts; criminal justice systems; electric power generation and distribution systems; emergency response systems; environmental agencies; financial institutions; insurance industry; petrochemical refineries and oil/gas-line…

Describes an intelligent tutor incorporating a program using artificial-intelligence planning methods to generate realistic audit files reporting actions of simulated users and intruders of a UNIX system, and a program simulating the system afterwards that asks students to inspect the audit and fix problems. Experiments show that students using…