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Network and Infrastructure , Security

Let's Tighten the Security of the Campus Network

by Raymond Poon

In recent months, there is a significant increase in the number of virus attacks and hacking activities targeted at or originated from our campus network. During the trouble-shooting and investigations of these incidents, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) discovered that the network database (which contains such information as IP addresses, network card addresses, and the locations and names of their owners, etc.) was quite outdated. As a result, this led to a delay in rectifying problems as well as notifying the victim users, and had caused unnecessary inconvenience or disturbance to those who were thought to be involved but in fact had nothing to do with those unfortunate incidents.

In order to provide the University community a safe and reliable computer network to work on and to enable effective network management (easy fault isolation, quick identification of network problems, speedy recovery, etc.), the following measures will be taken:

  1. Re-register all network cards and IP addresses. Departments will be informed of the re-registration procedure in due course.

  2. Upon completion of the re-registration exercise, all unregistered network cards or IP addresses will be immediately filtered from the network if discovered and no prior notice will be given.

  3. In connection to this, when computers or network devices are found to have been infected by viruses, conducted illegal activities, complained by external parties with compelling evidence, violated existing policies, etc., their network card addresses and/or IP addresses will also be immediately filtered from the network without any prior notice.

  4. All blocked network cards and/or IP addresses will be listed on the Web for easy checking by the user concerned. They will be unblocked only when proper remedial actions have been taken and the CSC has been so informed in writing.

  5. Departments could help the CSC to strengthen the security of the campus network by:

    1. returning any unused IP addresses
    2. canceling registrations of obsolete or unused network cards
    3. avoiding to apply for more IP addresses than necessary
    4. notifying the CSC of any transfer of ownership of computers or network devices as well as their relocations.
    5. securing all servers and networks under the management of department through regular monitoring, applying patches in time, adopting industry's best practices, and following the guidelines and advices published and updated regularly by the CSC.
    6. promoting security awareness and compliant to the University IT policies.
    7. returning any unused network points.

Should department have any query and concern regarding the above, please contact Mr. Raymond Poon at 2628 2668.