College campuses vulnerable to cyber attacks

Whether it’s accessing a course webpage on a library computer, checking an email on a tablet in class, or using a phone to post on Twitter in the dining hall, college campus computer networks have made the college experience easier.

With this level of convenience, open networks make higher education institutions more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

But most students aren’t aware of the risks involved.

Aranya Chakraborrty, an assistant professor for the college of engineering at North Carolina State University, said the constant change in technology has made security efforts more of a challenge.

“The traditional way of looking at security is just the security of one computer,” Chakrabortty said. “What we do now is we always depend on networks of computers.”

Connor Reed, a junior studying computer science at NCSU, frequently uses the campus’ network. While his major helped him understand cyber security, he thinks it’s something more of his peers should be interested in.

“I think everyone needs to be drawn to cyber security in some way, shape or form,” Reed said.

Reed said students often have a “it probably won’t happen to me” attitude about the threat of a cyber attack, but they should be concerned with what types of information are at risk of being exposed. Reed pointed out the trove of information in school records, including Social Security numbers, birth dates and student ID numbers.

Both Indiana University and the University of Maryland were subject to cyber attacks on their campuses in 2014, exposing nearly 146,000 and 300,000 records, respectively.

Chakraborrty said NCSU aims to keep some of its research confidential because hackers often want to make money from top-secret information.

“There’s a huge amount of research at N.C. State which has to do with defense-related organizations,” Chakraborrty said.

Although the university prides itself on offering secure IT services for the N.C. State community, both Reed and Chakrabortty still recommend being proactive when using an open network.

“Keep passwords strong,” Reed said. He suggests using about 16 characters of mixed numbers, letters and symbols.