North Dakota IT and the state’s university system are partnering to make colleges more cyber-safe.
This isn’t a new partnership. They’ve worked together for several years in securing these large educational facilities that are naturally prone to cyber-attacks.
North Dakota University Systems is still in charge of cybersecurity for the schools, but now, NDIT is providing a cyber tool kit to enhance that effort.
The state’s Chief Information Security Officer Kevin Ford says his department is able to help purchase the necessary software and other infrastructure at the state level, making it much cheaper and more effective for colleges.
In addition, because NDIT will have access to the programs, the state’s cyber experts can better track patterns of attacks.
“Because then we can say, ‘Hey, this thing happened in the university system. Well look, we now see it happening in the K-12.’ And if we hadn’t had the university system telling us that this is a security incident, we maybe would have never picked up on that,” Ford explained.
He says colleges across the country are at a pretty high risk for these types of attacks, making this partnership a priority.
