Data kept safe through encryption, cloud storage


This summer, data on American campuses was under attack, with some schools like the University of Wisconsin reporting 100,000 cyber-attacks from Chinese IP addresses every day.

data-security-cloud
CrashPlan backs up university’s data by encrypting it and storing it in the cloud.

At the same time, more than half of universities still transmit various kinds of sensitive data over unencrypted channels, according to a recent survey conducted by HALOCK Security Labs.

The not-for-profit consortium Internet2 is helping its 250 member institution members tackle the problem by providing them with the endpoint backup service CrashPlan.

CrashPlan, developed by Code42, protects data in two ways: backing up the information by storing it in the cloud and by encrypting it the moment it leaves the source.

“CrashPlan is all about data protection, specifically on endpoints, so laptops and desktops,” said Brian Bell, president and COO at Code42. “What we do is protect your data and do it in a really elegant way so that you don’t even know it’s happening. It’s backing up your files and data all the time, when you open your laptop, close it, open it again. And it doesn’t matter if you’re in a Starbucks or at home.”

That means the data can also be accessed anywhere by any device the user has granted permission.

With more and more faculty relying on mobile devices, being able to access the same information across multiple platforms is becoming increasingly important.

See Page 2 for  examples of how CrashPlan has helped faculty in a data crisis.

If a faculty member is on sabbatical, for example, but all of her research was created on the computer in her office 300 miles away, she can just grab those files from CrashPlan and bring them up on her iPad.

“Here’s another case,” Bell said. “There were some faculty working with us that were doing research and they lost a laptop. They were able to basically just download all that data onto a new laptop and get to work again immediately.”

Many of the universities involved with Internet2 and using its Net+ platform have experience with CrashPlan, said Andrew Keating, program manager at Internet2. But the new service being provided to the consortium’s members is more specific to those universities’ concerns.

Six Internet2-member universities piloted the program first, including Arizona State University, Stanford University, and the University of Texas at Austin. Then the organization used existing Net+ legal agreements that had already been reviewed by dozens of higher education counsel to inform the agreement with Code42, Keating said.

“We had ensure that not only were there customized options on the technical side, but also on the legal side of data handling and security,” Keating said.

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