Ball State Information Security Operations teaches students importance of cyber security
October 28, 2013National Cyber Security Awareness Month is mobilizing information technology experts across the country, but cyber safety is ultimately the responsibility of anybody who touches a keyboard. Deb Howell, assistant director of Ball State information security operations, said students and others need to avoid phishing scams and other common hacking efforts and not depend on others to protect them. “Someone always assumes that someone else is taking care of it,” she said. Hacking victims have included Twitter and some of the country’s other best-known social network companies, as well as units of government including the state courts office in Washington state last fall. In that Washington court case, as many as a million driver’s license numbers and 160,000 Social Security numbers were exposed, according to The Associated Press. “Our country will, for example, at some point, face a major cyber event that will have a serious effect on our lives, our economy and the everyday functioning of our society,” Janet Napolitano, former secretary of Homeland Security, said in August. National Cyber Security Awareness Month is intended to alert computer users to the threat of online attacks and provide advice on how to avoid them. At Ball State, the university reached out to students at Late Nite on Saturday.
