HAMLET — Richmond Community College hosted a Cyber Security Summit on Tuesday in the wake of the college’s recovery from its own cyber security breach this summer which affected all of the college’s internet-based services.
Daniel Farmer was the guest speaker for the event, offering his guidelines for how businesses and individuals should think about the security of their data, as well as prepare for and react to cyber attacks. Farmer, an Regional IT Supervisor for the Court System of North Carolina and a U.S. Army veteran, outlined some of the common excuses people give for not getting quality cyber security:
• Underestimating the risk, i.e. saying, “I don’t have anything worth stealing.”
• Wrong ratio of stuff worth protecting and the amount of security.
• The cost of quality protection.
• Thinking they are too busy to learn current security needs.
Farmer said that ideally, everyone should have a two-to-one ratio between layers of security and things you care about.
Good protection is not cheap, which Farmer said was an issue when he did IT for UNC Pembroke. He said his superior asked him why he always went with the most expensive security package in the budget because he wanted to know that when he had an issue at 3 a.m., that someone would pick up the phone.
“I’ll save a dime by going out and downloading some free virus protection — well, ‘a penny wise and a dollar foolish,’” Farmer said. “What happens at 3 o’clock in the morning when the stuff gets compromised? Is anybody at FreeABSoftware.com going to pick up the phone at 3 o’clock in the morning and stop their entire life to help you?”
On the people that say they’re too busy to reach a good level of cyber security, Farmer said, “Really? You got time to be dumb.”
“I guarantee you it takes as much time to be smart as it does to be stupid,” he said.
To combat cyber threats, it’s important to do an honest assessment of what devises you have, how they can be accessed physically or remotely, how much information you have worth protecting and the type of information you have. Simple things like updating software and security and reducing the amount of technology you have to the essentials can help.
Farmer said to buy and maintain a current firewall, educate yourself and your employees on current technology, and document what you are learning to build effective policies that can be shared for future trainings.
He also made a point to differentiate between two types of response to an attack: “disaster recovery” versus “business resumption planning,” which represents a change in mindset.
No student or faculty data was breached in cyber disturbance that hit RCC on July 19, according to Dr. Dale McInnis, president of RCC. The disturbance was caused by RCC’s server infrastructure being accessed by “unknown outside parties.”
“We’ve not only recovered but we’re stronger and better technically than we were before,” McInnis told the Richmond County Board of Commissioners at their October meeting. “Improvements have been made in terms of our infrastructure, our network architecture, the anti-malware devices and services and the fact that now we have migrated to Amazon web services.”
McInnis added at the meeting that RCC’s 2019 fall enrollment was only 12 students higher than fall 2018’s, despite projections which put this year’s enrollment much higher than that. He attributed this flat increase to the students not being able to register or pay tuition online while the networks were repaired.
All of RCC’s computers are now operating on OneDrive to mitigate file storage issues, a transition the college was already making, according to McInnis.
For more information about RCC’s Information Technology courses, contact Lance Barber at 910-410-1911 or [email protected].