As part of an ongoing attempt to address possible weaknesses in the nation's defense against terrorism, President Bush's top computer-security adviser Richard A. Clarke called on universities to help develop strategies for protecting the nation's technology systems.
Clarke, who issued the statement at a Networking 2002 conference last Thursday in Washington, D.C., said universities are an important venue for developing increased security systems to protect sensitive data from potential terrorists, because businesses often cannot afford to conduct this sort of research.
Shirley Payne, director of security coordination and external relations for the University office of information technologies, said there is no easy way to develop a secure system.
"We have to do a number of things," Payne said. "You can't do a single thing and say you have a secure system."
Payne added that, in addition to keeping software up to date and frequently applying the newest software patches, which fix known problems in existing software, safe computing practices mark an important facet of security.
"Education is another big piece" of the security problem, she said. "Simply making people aware is a challenge."
Though Clarke indicated in his statement that the White House would support university efforts to research greater security, he said afterward no special funding is available for this project.
Payne said that, while some educational programs do not require large sums of money to operate, not all research is inexpensive.
"I would love to train everyone who runs a server," she said. "But some of the things we would like to do would take money."
Several incidences of security breaches in university computer systems have occurred in the last several years, prompting universities to review their own security protocol. In 2000, a hacker broke into the University of Washington Medical Center's records and downloaded information on thousands of patients, allegedly to prove the weakness of the hospital's security.
Computer security "is becoming more and more of an issue as we put more and more things online," Computer Science Dept. Chairman John Stankovic said. "In general, lots of software that exists does not address security adequately."
Stankovic said Bill Gates, Microsoft chairman and chief software architect, had every programmer at Microsoft spend two months working on nothing but security, in order to address weaknesses in Windows and other Microsoft programs.
Clarke did not outline any specific strategies at Thursday's conference, but said the White House would publish a report in late July that would provide further clarification.
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