October 2007 — Security Supplement
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School Security Strategy—Simplified
At the Weber School District in Ogden, UT, technology officials have embraced an identity management solution that incorporates the eDirectory and Identity Manager products from Novell. The solution was designed to integrate identities from a variety of disparate applications, including student registration, financials, human resources, and more. Dave Brooks, the district's director of technology, says that for years employees updated this information manually.
The district now has a consolidated view of 31,000 student and staff identities, based on the latest information from human resources systems. With the help of Novell Identity Manager, the new approach also automatically synchronizes identity information across other applications, eliminating the need for humans to do a computer's work. What's more, each student and staff member now has a single ID and password to manage their identities across the entire campus network.
"We've freed up our IT staff from mundane user management so they can work on innovative projects," Brooks says. "Now we can give students consistent and secure access to the information they need to be successful in school."
Next up: Physical Security
Looking forward, experts say one of the biggest security issues for the 2008-2009 school year will be physical security. This issue, thrust into the nation's collective consciousness after the Virginia Tech massacre, will be the subject of a full-length feature in the November issue of T.H.E. Journal. In general, the topic covers the kinds of security measures you'd see at a major multi-national corporation: biometrics, ID cards, surveillance cameras, and more.
One district that's currently leading in this area is Morgan Hill Unified School District in San Jose, CA. Over the last two years, officials have installed 56 SNC-RZ25 Internet Protocol cameras from Sony in two different high schools. The cameras record up to five days of footage, and have empowered school officials to deter vandals and graffiti artists from defacing school property. Al Solis, director of facilities, says the cameras also have helped nab at least one thief in the act.
"We saw the guy's face, clear as day, on the video," he says, noting that as of August 20, the suspect had not been caught. "Without this technology, we wouldn't have even known where to look."
If anybody knows about physical security in the K-12 environment, it's Ken Trump. As president of Cleveland, OH-based consulting firm National School Safety and Security Services, Trump opines on school safety just about every day. His advice: in choosing physical security tools, districts should go for those that improve the ability to communicate in both everyday and emergency situations so that districts are prepared for anything.
Equally important to Trump is the issue of access control. This discipline includes automatically locking doors, buzzer-camera-intercom systems, and new technologies that scan drivers' licenses and check sexual offender databases upon request. While all of these issues are important, Trump says that administrators will continue to struggle with security policies, and the task of creating a welcoming environment for legitimate users while making sure illegitimate users stay out.
"Security equipment is only as effective as the weakest link in the human chain behind the equipment," he says. "The bottom line is that security technology is only one piece of the puzzle."
-Matt Villano, a writer and editor based in Healdsburg, CA, is a regular contributor to T.H.E. Journal.
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