Home Computer Security and Cardinal Station

Dear Colleagues,

Cardinal Station, the student information system at CUA, provides significant improvements over the previous system. Cardinal Station is web-based, which means that members of the staff can perform functions whenever and wherever they’re needed. But, as always, with flexibility and simplicity comes a new level of complexity. Most of us never had to worry about home computer security issues before, since we couldn’t access much from home in the old system. But with the new accessibility, and new level of caution is needed.

The Good News

Access to Cardinal Station is encrypted. Firewalls are in place to make it very difficult to hack the system. Communications from your home machine to the servers are protected with the most current technologies available.

The Bad News

The chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and the weak link in this chain is our home machines. The greatest danger is that black hats could access and infect our home machines and gain access to confidential data.

Worst Case Scenario

Over 60,000 social security numbers were compromised last year at the University of Texas. The state of California just mailed out 1.5 million letters because a home machine was compromised at Berkeley. There was a time when computing security at Universities meant simply protecting information about money and grades. Now, it is money, grades, and personally identifiable information, especially information that could lead to identity theft.

How to Protect Yourself and the University

The best advice is that we all be careful. Before we access the system from home, we should ask ourselves, "Is it really crucial that this be done tonight? Shouldn't I do this in the morning from work?"

If you must access data from home, here are some simple steps that you should take to minimize your risk:

• Run virus protection software and make sure that it is kept up to date. This will protect you from the majority of Internet viruses and worms, including those sent via email.
  
• Run a software firewall. This will help to hide your computer from outside searches – and attacks.
  
• Set your machine to download updates from Microsoft or Apple automatically. This will keep your computer patched against known attacks. If everyone had configured their computers to download updates automatically, the Blaster worm of 2004 would not have caused such havoc.
  
• Your computer very likely has "spyware" on it. Make sure that you are running something that will detect and remove this spyware.
  
• Your password is not "strong" enough. We know you have heard this dozens of times, and we know that you have heard that you shouldn’t share your password. Please take a moment and make sure your Cardinal Station password is a mix of letters, numbers, and punctuation.
  
• Don't forget to log out of your computer before walking away from it. It is one thing to let your sixteen year-old read your email; it is quite another to leave a student's data up on the screen.

Many of these topics are discussed in more detail, with links to technical resources, in the Safe Computing Practices document. Most of the topics in that document are applicable to your home computer.

During the coming weeks, we will be implementing additional security practices. Please keep your eyes open for upcoming announcements of additional training, policies and procedures.