The
number of security breaches in our university's computer network
has significantly increased in recent years. In the last few
months we experienced severe damages brought about by increasingly
and highly advanced malicious attacks. The situation will worsen
in the near future if we fail to step up our effort in strengthening
our network security measures. Prevention, detection, and rectification
of security breaches are now top priority for the computing
community of the university.
Based on
our experience as well as reports from universities elsewhere,
most of the network attacks and security loopholes are due to
improper management of network servers that intentionally or
unintentionally offer access or services to outsiders. These
servers are easy targets to attack: to be used for spreading
viruses, to bring down the campus network, or to launch attacks
to others. Even worse, they may be hijacked by hackers to conduct
criminal activities.
Apart from
security problems, our investigations also revealed that some
of our colleagues have set up their own office computers as
private servers and offered access or services to outsiders
without the consent from their department. Some even have allowed
outsiders to download large files (including software, music,
or movies) from their servers. These are considered as illegal
activities as firstly they improperly use university's scarce
and expensive resources to conduct non-university business,
secondly they often cause damages to the university by jamming
the network traffic, and thirdly they may put the university
at risk of being charged for violations of intellectual property
law.
In view
of all these problems, it is required that all servers operating
on the City University Network (CTNET) must be registered with
the Computing Services Centre (CSC). Any unregistered server,
once discovered, will be immediately barred from accessing the
CTNET without further notice. To register your server, please
complete the "Network Server Registration Form" obtainable
from "Forms" under "e-Communication" menu
of the CityU Intranet or simply go directly to http://www.cityu.edu.hk/csc/forms/reg_server.pdf.
Please note that whenever a computer offering network services,
that are accessible by external or internal users, or only accessible
by its owner remotely through campus network, is classified
as a server.
As soon
as you register your server, the CSC will provide you with continuous
support including technical advice, information about software
updates, security patches, timely security and virus alerts,
etc. If you do not want to shoulder all the burdens of maintaining
your own server, you may also consider moving your "site"
to the university server. Once your site is hosted by the CSC,
we will take care of all system and network management, backup,
software updates, security and virus protection for you while
you can still "own" the server and have all the facilities
and freedom to provide services to your users as before. If
you are interested in this, you may contact our Systems Manager,
John Chan at ext. 8259.
