Use of technology helps schools find relevance in a globalizing world

MANILA, Philippines - In recent years, the education sector has gone through a transformation. From a world of individual and largely isolated institutions, it has become one at the forefront of computing, the Internet and international collaboration.

Over time, a couple of trends have emerged. Content-rich educational materials focused on computing applications have become widespread and teaching methods geared to take advantage of them have come into place. Concurrently, with the availability of bandwidth and smart mobile devices, young adults’ lives have become much more centered around the Internet and the activities they carry out on it.

The instant availability of content, however, also exposes students to the worst ills of our global society. Websites that distort facts, promote violence or other unsuitable content are readily available, while cyber scams inundate Internet users to steal their money and personal information every day.

Yet, there are ways for institutions to harness the value of ubiquitous connectivity of the Internet while mitigating the inherent threats. This starts with an assessment of their own needs and challenges, and finding solutions to them based on current technologies and industry best practices. Here are some of the common ones.

Campus topologies and high density access

Many colleges and universities have multiple faculties and departments located in disparate buildings. Deploying wired networks can be cost prohibitive and impractical in many situations. An attractive alternative is to provide wireless connectivity based on the latest international standards to allow rapid and cost-effective extension of existing networks across the entire campus.

Where wireless networks are deployed, steps must be taken to ensure that users in high traffic areas like lecture theaters are well-catered for. Channel interference, as well as channel frequency and access point overload, are also common issues that degrade the quality of wireless service and must be looked into. The solution would include the use of properly configured wireless networking equipment designed for high traffic conditions.

Students expect to be able to access the Internet from their personal mobile devices. Institutions must make sure that their wireless networks, particularly those in high-user density environments, can cope with large variability in client numbers, load and traffic types. In addition, the security solutions put in place must allow the rapid and cost-effective extension of the network across large areas, between buildings and even in built-up areas. This is essential for optimal campus-wide service delivery.

User identification for profiling and segmentation

Different user categories (i.e. students, staff, visitors) need to have different levels of access to internal and Internet based resources. Schools can dictate this in a number of ways, but the most common and efficient is through user identification at the point where users authenticate onto a network.

Having security policies that are based on identity and the type of device used allows an institution to define and implement solid boundaries. Some security solutions on the market allow two-factor authentication to be used in conjunction with robust identity management capabilities — this lets institutions give fine-grained authorization to network-based resources.

 It is generally a given that visitors to modern education institutions can enjoy access to the Internet. Ideally, this is provided free of charge and branded with the institution’s own landing/login page.

Consequently, an IT infrastructure is required to provide this type of differentiated service comprising of wireless access points, wireless guest management and welcome/login pages in addition to fine-grained, segmented security management.

Cost-effective bring-your-own-device (BYOD) security solutions that can manage the full diversity of user profiles — from purely unknown wireless guests through to high privilege administrators of IT resources connecting from a controlled desktop — can help institutions effectively control guests’ mobile device usage. Such BYOD solutions should be able to manage security profiles based on factors like the mobile device platform type and client reputation.

Demonstrable duty-of-care and acceptable use policies

Despite the fact that the majority of users of the schools’ networking and Internet access are over the age of consent, the need to provide a demonstrable duty-of-care remains. The core pillar of this responsibility is an enforceable acceptable use policy that defines e-safety and strikes a balance between accessibility and protection for each faculty, function and user category.

As a best practice, schools must detail the controls that are put into place, whether they are preventative, detective or corrective. Security policies must be flexible yet robust, incorporating up-to-date filters to categorized Web sites and applications, while allowing access to white-listed resources.

Globalizing campuses

Intensifying competition in the education sector has driven institutions to search for lucrative overseas students. Many schools now have partner or extension faculties in other parts of the world, including rapidly developing economies in Southeast Asia or the Middle East. Key to the success of such strategies is fast yet secure wide area networking linking such sites together to share resources.

Budgetary challenges

In the public and private sectors alike, budgets are under severe pressure. Delivery and support of technical systems are usually relegated to secondary priority after front-line services with direct, visible costs such as staff, capital assets and buildings. IT directors can meet budget expectations better by using technology platforms that are not just cost effective at the acquisition stage but also easy to manage and support in the long run.

Institutions today are hard pressed to expand and upgrade their IT infrastructures — not just in response to student and staff demands, but to national education guidelines and the business pressure for expanding operations to overseas markets.

Marrying the above steps with strategic thinking can remove the triple constraints of cost, complexity and security slowing down such transformation, and help bring institutions to the next lap.