Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

CIO Update: PCC Security

Posted by amcmahon

Dear Colleagues:

For the past two years, the PCC IT department has been implementing a program to combat the growing threat of cyber crime. An important part of that program is to address known security vulnerabilities related to how we store files.

In 2018 we will be implementing new projects that may affect the way you work today – but we will combine these changes with new and better solutions to help you manage your data more effectively. Some of these address security for “data at rest” – making sure that we have good security for all official PCC documents, files, and key databases.

One area of concern is storing files on your computer’s C: drive or on flash drives. This is not a “best practice” for many reasons and is actually a violation of our Information Security Policy. We have not aggressively pursued this policy issue to-date, as we realize we can’t enforce a change to existing work habits without providing a better alternative.

Starting in April and continuing over the summer we will introduce new tools and solutions to provide greater data protection, as well as functionality that should negate the need to store data files on your computer. Our goal is to make this transition as seamless and transparent to you as possible. If there are cases where issues arise, IT will provide high availability support and responsiveness.

Please pay attention to subsequent communications from IT on this topic to ensure a successful roll-out over the coming months. These communications will include details of changes and timelines. Thank you in advance for your support in making PCC as secure as possible for the protection of our staff, faculty and students.

If you have any questions please contact the Service Desk at 971.722.4400 or by email to servicedesk@pcc.edu.

Michael

Michael Northover
Chief Information Officer
Portland Community College
michael.northover@pcc.edu
W: 971.722.8508
C: 503.601.9425