Some faculty noted in the survey comments that “better procedures for dealing with faculty computers that have viruses (notification of problem, providing time to back up files, given a loaner computer when the infected computer is taken away, timely return of cleaned computer” are needed.
During the first six months of 2010, academia was the business sector most impacted by malware. Colleges and universities are a favored target because of our complex, distributed, and diverse environment.
In order to comply with laws designed to protect individuals’ information, IR is often required to immediately remove an infected PC (or other device) from the University network. Before it can be returned, IR has to perform extensive scanning and investigation of the PC’s hard drive, making sure that no personally identifiable information (PII) was removed by the attacker(s). This is really time consuming – at one point during Summer 2010, IT Services had a backlog of over 20 infected devices.
IR is aware of the hardship this creates for faculty members and has worked with the Information Security Office to streamline the process. The investigative process has been split from the cleaning and rebuilding process to speed things up. Users are now getting a cleaned system back within 24 – 48 hours. And, as a result of this streamlining, faculty members are notified about what’s happening, and they have the opportunity to get a loaner system.
The best thing that faculty can do, though, is to avoid storing personally identifiable information (PII) like Social Security numbers, birth dates, or financial account information on our hard drives – so that if your machine does ever get infected, it will be returned to you much faster. The best place to safely store PII is on Royal Drive.
Other concerns about faculty equipment included “replacing desktops with laptops” and “expanding the available computer options.” Faculty equipment is selected and purchased through what’s called the Central Microcomputer Budgeting Process. Each fall, department chairs are provided with a current departmental microcomputer inventory. The chairs are asked to review the adequacy of the existing hardware in light of each faculty member’s job responsibilities and desire to work with technology, and then recommend upgrades for the next fiscal year. Given the high volume of requests, not all of these requests can be satisfied. IR evaluates the departmental reviews and approves as many upgrades as financially possible. On average, 300 microcomputers are replaced every year.
The budgeting process for the next fiscal year is currently underway, so if you need a computer upgrade, you should contact your department chair as soon as possible (the forms are due back to IR by December 13), and keep in mind that you can ask to switch from Windows to Mac, or from a desktop to a laptop.
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