Our involvement there was based within their world of academia, and all academic institutions face unique information security threats and increasingly frequent and severe
incidents of attack and data loss, yet little research has been conducted to address what I see as a cultural issue and attitude about security.

Incidents such as
information theft, data tampering, viruses, worms, and terrorist activity constitute significant threats
to public safety and national security, but rarely do we hear of security issues that involve academic institutions where the founding research, and our nations technical innovation incubators exist. Theft of cutting edge research has always been highly valued by foreign governments, and yet our academic culture has always been one of open sharing in the name of good for all humanity.

The clash between academia’s open culture and current needs for security, the anonymity and
diversity of IT users, and students’ high-risk activities (e.g., peer-to-peer networking, wireless,
instant messaging) are establishing academic institutions as the weakest link in America’s chain of
infrastructure security, and this particular bases security within its academic institution was virtually non-existent.

Thank God we are just “sheep in wolves clothing”. Had we had malicious intent…we’d have owned that base, and all the research they do.