THE Journal — Security/Privacy
Sarasota County SD Ramps Up Video Surveillance
Sarasota County School District in Florida is expanding its video surveillance program, bringing the total number of installed cameras to more than 2,500, according to GVI Security Solutions, Samsung's security technology master distributor.
(5/19/2008)
JDCHS Streamlines Backup and Recovery for Mac Network
Juan Diego Catholic High School in Draper, UT faced a problem with its hybrid tape/disk backup and recovery system: It didn't always work, and, when it did, it was slow. So the school recently replaced the system with a pure disk-based RAID to handle its more than 455 networked Macs, along with offsite archive drives for business continuity/disaster recovery.
(5/15/2008)
Osage County: Security in a Small School District
The Osage County R-II School District in Osage County, Missouri, is tiny--600 to 650 students, according to Richard Becker, technology coordinator. Yet it faces the same computer security challenges of larger districts with far fewer resources—a scarcity of resources that includes staffing. Becker himself makes up half of the entire technical team.
(5/13/2008)
Site Provides Free Interactive School Security Awareness
A free, interactive School Security Awareness Map and blog went live online in April at www.schoolsafetynews.com. Developed by SafePlans and designed to inform stakeholders on the need for improved school safety, the site includes a map that displays relevant school security-related issues.
(5/13/2008)
El Paso ISD Adopts District-wide IP Video Surveillance
El Paso Independent School District in Texas said it's planning to deploy IP video surveillance across al of its high schools and middle schools. EPISD is the seventh-largest district in the state, with 92 total campuses.
(5/13/2008)
Study: Top Web Application Vulnerabilities Remain Unfixed
Organizations still aren't doing enough to protect their data from Web application vulnerabilities, according to a study released Tuesday by security firm Cenzic. The study, Application Security Trends Report, Q1 2008, identified "1,409 unique published vulnerabilities for the first quarter of 2008, with Web technology vulnerabilities comprising 70 percent of the vulnerability volume...."
(5/13/2008)
VBA To Return to Mac; Office 2008 SP1 Released
Microsoft Tuesday released Service Pack 1 for Office 2008 for Mac, the first major update to what the company called its most successful Mac Office launch in 19 years (in terms of sales volume). In a surprise move, Microsoft's Mac Business Unit also announced that it plans to bring Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) back to the Mac platform with the next major release.
(5/13/2008)
Prep School Rolls Out Internet Security System
John Paul II High School, a coeducational Catholic college preparatory school in Plano, TX, has selected Dallas-based DeepNines Technologies' iTrust security platform to control emerging Internet threats.
(5/12/2008)
LanSchool 7.1 Adds Blocking and Monitoring Features
LanSchool Technologies this week released LanSchool 7.1, an update to the company's classroom monitoring and control software suite designed to limit what students can do with their computers. Version 7.1 adds new device blocking and monitoring capabilities and also includes performance and usability enhancements.
(5/8/2008)
School Web Lockers Debuts 'Profanity Filter'
Web technology provider School Web Lockers has launched a new service for its collaboration and file sharing system: profanity filters.
(5/6/2008)
Children's Way Beefs Up Security in K-6 Virtual World
Non-profit developer Children's Way Foundation has teamed with eGuardian to bolster security on its Woogi World, an online virtual world for K-6 students. The agreement allows Woogi World to incorporate eGuardian's online verification service as a means of safeguarding kids from online strangers who might be posing as other children.
(5/1/2008)
SafeSchools, Keenan To Launch Safety Training for California Schools
Keenan & Associates and SafeSchools have joined forces to create an online training program for California public educational agencies. Beginning this summer, Keenan will provide all of its property and casualty clients with access to these training tools through "Keenan SafeSchools," a Web-based delivery system for safety and risk management training modules.
(4/28/2008)
Long Island District Deploys Network Cameras
The Long Beach City School District in Long Island, NY is using network cameras from Axis Communications to provide surveillance at its schools. Designed by A+ Technology Solutions, the system leverages the district's existing infrastructure and provides the benefit of high-resolution clarity for positive identification.
(4/28/2008)
Information Security Set for Explosive Growth
Driven by compliance and public confidence issues, information security is expected to expand dramatically over the next few years, according to new research released by Frost & Sullivan and (ISC)². Worldwide, the number of information security professionals will grow from 1.66 million in 2007 to about 2.7 million in 2012, experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent.
(4/23/2008)
Microsoft Investigating LocalSystem Access Bug
Security personnel in Redmond are investigating a newly reported zero-day bug vulnerability in Microsoft operating systems and server systems. The bug, disclosed Thursday by Bill Sisk, security response communications manager for Microsoft, allows escalation of privilege to occur for authenticated users under specific conditions.
(4/22/2008)
Hoax Subpoena E-Mails Shine Light on 'Spearphishing'
Last week, hundreds of executives at some of America's most well-known companies received e-mails that they probably didn't want to get--even if those messages weren't a hoax.
(4/22/2008)
Virtual Security Gets a Boost
How secure is your virtual environment? Recent US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletins list several vulnerabilities for versions of software from VMware that allow attackers to cause denial of service attacks, generate buffer overflows, expose password logging and gain unauthorized privileges that can be used to hijack processes. The exposures have been addressed in patches by the company, but concern has been growing that virtual machines may get less security-related attention from IT staff than physical boxes.
(4/22/2008)
Florida Bill Strikes Zero Tolerance
A bill filed April 18 in the Florida House of Representatives aims to prevent further harm from zero tolerance policies that have caused children to be expelled and, in some cases, arrested for violating school rules. CS/HB 7087 revises state juvenile justice statutes and provisions and, among other things, strikes all references to zero tolerance in schools and specifies that students should be expelled and referred to law enforcement only for "serious criminal offenses."
(4/21/2008)
Bradford Grammar School Deploys Disaster Recovery System
Bradford Grammar School in the U.K. has deployed a disaster recovery solution from FalconStor Software called FalconStor Continuous Data Protector. The new recovery solution will be used in conjunction with the school's DotHill and IBM SAN storage systems, which presently back up about 4.5 TB per day.
(4/16/2008)
Baton Rouge Schools Test First Responder Video Communication System
The East Baton Rouge Parish School System has implemented a pilot project involving three of its 90 schools in an "intelligent building response" initiative. The city was the site earlier this year of a shooting that claimed three lives on the campus of the Louisiana Technical College. The district effort involves networking the three schools to 911, fire, emergency and police/sheriff substations to give incident commanders and responding units the ability to view a developing security or fire emergency at each school through a mobile, wireless computer system.
(4/14/2008)
Forefront Integrated Security System Beta Released
Microsoft Corp.made available a public beta release of its Forefront security solution, code-named "Stirling." The software is an integrated security system designed to allow administrators to control, access, and manage security capabilities across an organization's IT infrastructure. It includes a central management console for security configuration and enterprise-wide visibility and works with other ForeFront products that secure clients, Exchange, SharePoint, and the next version of Internet Security and Acceleration Server (ISA Server).
(4/10/2008)
HP Makes Push into Data Encryption
HP has introduced several products to address data protection and compliance in storage environments, including add-ons that do automated data encryption on tape drives and libraries. Among the offerings: a secure fabric switch; an encryption kit for tape autoloaders and libraries; integration of compliance and management appliances; and, a free online security assessment tool.
(4/9/2008)
Microsoft Proposes Cross-Industry Effort To Address Online Trust Challenge
Microsoft Corp. this week initiated a call for action to address the future of security and privacy on the Internet. In a speech by Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie, the company proposed "End to End Trust," a pitch for organizations, including vendors and user organizations, to work together to create a more secure and trusted online environment.
(4/9/2008)
Taxing the System
Eager to comply with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which addresses concerns over access to "offensive" Internet content on school and library computers, the Poway Unified School District made a move this year to ensure that its 33,000 students are kept as far away as possible from such content. By beefing up its Internet content-filtering, the San Diego, CA district also put itself in the position to qualify for federal grants not accessible to schools that don't comply with CIPA.
(4/8/2008)
Consulting Firm Launches Training To Show Educators How To Defuse Hostility
Anzen, an Alexandria, VA company that provides personal security training for public and corporate organizations, announced a new program to address safety in educational institutions. Called USA Safe Schools, the initiative provides schools with tools and training to reduce hostile threats to teachers and students.
(4/8/2008)
