April 2005 — Applications
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Dominican U. Secures Network to Protect Students and Faculty
www.lightspeedsystems.com). TTC is a comprehensive security suite that protects against all types of malicious code and spam. The software also enables us to mange the bandwidth of our network to relieve bottlenecks caused by peer-to-peer programs and other popular student applications. With TTC, we effectively gain additional bandwidth without incurring the extra cost of T1 lines. All of the software’s functionalities came into play when we were hit by the Sasser virus earlier this year. The network traffic generated by the virus was quickly identified by TTC and stopped before it saturated the university’s firewall and Internet connection. Using TTC, Dominican was able to identify the exact student machines that were infected and notified students of the problem.Regulation. As noted above, there may be a role for government involvement in making large companies more forthright about the installation and removal of adware and other spyware. There’s certainly a role for the government in the identification and prosecution of those individuals who promulgate damaging malicious code. These are people who cost companies and schools worldwide hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars. Therefore, significant government resources should be devoted to identifying, apprehending and holding accountable those responsible for disrupting the world’s most important communication and learning tool.
Worms, viruses and spyware are a reality for the foreseeable future. I believe that we’ll eventually find the right combination of educational, technological and legal tools to beat them back until they’re no longer a significant threat. But until that day, IT administrators will continue relying on security software such as TTC to protect our students and faculty, as well as fulfill the educational promise of the Internet.
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