MUNCIE -- Ball State University has made a lot of cybersecurity progress since a time in the 1990s when a hacker named Zyklon B gained access to the university’s computer system on which he posted messages, the board of trustees was told on Friday.
Since then, the university’s computer security office has grown from one part-time employee to four full-time staff and several part-time employees, Philip Repp, vice president of information technology at BSU, told trustees.
Two days after hackers attacked health insurance company Anthem — obtaining access to the names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, income data and other information on tens of millions of customers including BSU employees — Repp introduced trustees to Loren Malm, the university’s chief of computer security.
Ball State permits about nine million emails a month while blocking 36 million others, including an average of 1,500 high-risk Trojan attacks disguised as something helpful or enteratining, Malm reported.
The university also blocks a daily average of 15.6 million connection attempts on its external firewall.