Transformational Education > New technologies
Stephen Laster, CIO, on the balance between security and openness in an academic environment
Transcript
So you have this conundrum in IT in higher ed. Higher ed in general is about open borders, collaboration, sharing identity, sharing intellectual property, collaborating within the campus, and across the academy. But I don't want all those people on my network, because there are some really nasty people out there who would like to do bad things to HBS. So finding that balance of security and openness is an ongoing challenge. Helping the community to also understand that there are trade offs is an ongoing educational opportunity.
I often get asked specifically about spam, "Why does HBS get so much spam?" And usually the reference is to a spouse or a friend who works at a large financial institution, or a law firm, and they get less spam.
Pick your favorite company, and go to their website. My guess is you cannot find the email addresses of their top 250 employees. Go to HBS's website and look for the email addresses for all of our faculty. They're there. Because we have this need to get out and reach the world, and it's appropriate. But the tradeoff is that, yes, we're a target, and we're an identifiable target, because we put all that information out in plain hypertext. And so it is a challenge.