Integrating IT and Campus Facilities for Future-Ready Learning Space

Transforming the University on-campus digital experience

Recent discussions with education leaders and industry analysts show a rapidly evolving scenario in the ‘post-COVID era’, where universities face increasing pressure to enhance the on-campus experience for students, faculty, and staff. These stakeholders now have higher expectations for how they digitally engage with their institution, academic life, their peers, and the broader university community.

To meet these demands effectively, universities must modernize their physical and digital infrastructures by integrating Information Technology (IT) with campus facilities strategies. This integration enables leveraging technology to enhance resource and space management, create sustainable environments, foster dynamic teaching and learning, streamline administrative tasks, and provide well-being services through seamless digital interactions.

The integration of IT with campus facilities management not only optimizes operations but also enriches the overall experience for all stakeholders involved. Here are the priority drivers we have heard from education leaders for the Next Generation Campus:

Learning Spaces Physical and Digital Convergence

Physical and digital convergence in university campuses involves more than just offering physical spaces for academic and social activities. It encompasses providing robust connectivity, ensuring cybersecurity, and creating environmentally sustainable environments that promote collaboration, innovation, and well-being. This convergence extends beyond traditional areas like lecture theatres, libraries, and laboratories to include non-traditional learning spaces such as canteens and other open spaces where students can access online course materials, engage in social media, and interact with peers and instructors on and off campus.

Improving User Experience

The campus plays various roles for students, serving as a place to access specialized equipment and a hub for social connection with peers and the institution. Beyond education, living and working on campus are significant aspects of college or university life. Integrating the IT network with campus facilities management enhances the experience for students, faculty, and staff by simplifying tasks and minimizing obstacles. Digital wayfinding systems facilitate navigation through campus buildings, while smart scheduling platforms streamline room reservations and event planning. These technological enhancements simplify tasks, minimize obstacles, and foster a more positive and productive campus experience.

Using Data to Maximize Space and Resource Utilization

Integrating IT infrastructure with campus facilities management generates a wealth of data that can inform strategic planning and decision-making processes. By utilizing the WI-FI network to capture data, universities can gain real-time insights into utilizing campus facilities, analyzing trends in space usage, energy consumption, and facility maintenance. This data empowers informed decision-making on space allocation, usage patterns, and resource optimization. Moreover, predictive analytics can anticipate future needs and challenges, enabling proactive interventions and risk mitigation strategies.

Enhancing Operational Efficiency

Integrating IT with campus facilities management streamlines administrative processes, enhancing efficiency and cost-effectiveness. This integration automates tasks such as remote working for administrative staff, contact center operations, room bookings, and maintenance requests. By reducing manual workloads and improving response times, digital systems optimize resource allocation, minimize overhead costs, and promote agility and responsiveness within the institution.

Supporting Sustainability Initiatives

Digital technologies play a crucial role in supporting sustainability initiatives on campus. Smart IoT sensors in the IT network for energy management systems optimize HVAC controls, lighting schedules, and power usage, reducing carbon emissions and energy costs. Additionally, digital tools facilitate waste management and recycling efforts, promoting sustainability awareness among the campus community.

Enhancing Safety and Security

Integrating IT with campus facilities management strengthens safety and security measures on campus. Digital signage, surveillance systems, access control mechanisms, and emergency notification platforms leverage digital technologies to monitor and respond to potential threats effectively. These systems enhance campus safety by providing real-time insights, communication capabilities, and peace of mind for students, faculty, and staff.

How Cisco Can Help

The integration of IT and campus facilities strategies represents a paradigm shift for universities to transcend traditional silos and foster a holistic approach to optimize campus operations and enhance the student experience. At the heart of this integration lies a reliable, secure, and connected digital infrastructure providing real-time insights into how physical spaces are utilized and services delivered. With combined IT and facilities strategies, universities can create smarter, more sustainable, and student-centric campus environments, with tangible benefits for operational enhancements and brand reputation.

Source: cisco.com

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Education, Education, Education: RSA 2021 and the State of Education Security

There is an old maxim in the real estate profession that is used when evaluating the value of a home. Realtors often speak of “location, location, location”, as if the customer involved in the transaction is so unaware of that factor that it requires the incessant repetition. In cybersecurity, however, one area that is in dire need of a recurrent reminder is the area of education, both of cybersecurity professionals, as well as targeting that specialized knowledge towards the education sector.

Resilience, and Investing in People

This year’s RSA conference was started with an inspirational keynote message from CEO Charles (Chuck) Robbins. The theme of this year’s RSA conference was resilience, which is also the key to effective cybersecurity. The vision for a post-pandemic world is one where Cisco will invest more to make the world a safer place, while carrying out that vision in less time than ever.

Part of Cisco’s investment in the future is not only about technology, it is about people. There are around 2.8 million cyber professionals globally, but there are currently more than 4 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs. There is no other industry where the open positions exceed the number of available positions at such a grand scale. This is the equivalent of the entire population of many small countries. Cisco is seeking not only to enable the workforce by looking at the existing talent pool, but by also tapping into unconventional places to find new talent. Unlikely security professionals exist in places like the local coffee shop, the mechanic’s garage, and even the prisons.

This extreme reach for diversity is rooted firmly in history. When the world needed to solve the encryption puzzle used by the enemies in World War Two, they sought people from all walks of life to decipher what seemed like an unbreakable code. They were not all mathematicians. They included librarians, psychologists, and even hobbyists who collected porcelain figurines.

Diversity is a force multiplier towards solving outwardly unsolvable problems.

An Unnoticed Target

Education towards creating a stronger workforce is useless if not applied to business sectors that need it the most. One sector where there is a need for cybersecurity professionals is the area of education. In the 2018 “End-of-Year Data Breach Report” issued by the Identity Theft Research Center (ITRC), there were over 1.4 Million records breached at educational institutions. These numbers closely matched the breach numbers of 2017 for the education sector. However, over the course of 2019, the breached records increased to over 2.4 Million.

While the education sector falls last among the five industries monitored in the ITRC reports, there appears to be a pattern emerging.

Wendy’s Keen Insights

Cisco’s Head of Advisory CISOs, Wendy Nather, and Dr. Wade Baker, of the Cyentia Institute opened the final day of the 2021 RSA conference with by asking the question “What (Actually, Measurably) Makes a Security Program More Successful?”

Wendy stated that she dislikes benchmarks, mostly because some people are not good at it, offering more opinion that measurable results. In order to measure success, we must be more interested in what works. Wendy and Wade drew upon the findings of the Cisco 2020 Security Outcomes Study to discuss a methodology that is measurable, and actionable.

Follow the Patterns

The Security Outcomes Study findings are based on patterns, rather than raw numbers, and this is important when considering the rise in educational breaches. Valuable insights are derived by finding patterns in the data that show clear correlations between security practices, and the outcomes. As a cybersecurity professional, the idea of finding patterns that show clear correlations should resonate deeply, as this is a foundational tenet of your entire discipline of threat intelligence.

Ignoring a pattern just because it is deceptively insignificant at the time can lead to an instance of not seeing the shape of things to come. Are we on the precipice of witnessing a new target? The people at Cisco do not agree with the logic of ignoring it, hoping it will go away.

Why a School is a Good Target

It may seem like a school, or university is not a very lucrative target for a cyberattack, but when one stops to think about it, an educational institution contains a rich variety of valuable information, more than just the books in the student libraries and the fraternity and sorority houses.

Schools are fertile grounds for ideas, and inspirational knowledge. These are the roots of intellectual property.  In fact, some schools are branded as research universities. This means that the information about the students who are working on research, as well as the research itself, are viable targets for a cybercriminal.

How Cisco is Positioned to Protect These Valuable Assets

Cisco is uniquely qualified to protect all learning institutions by offering a wide range of security solutions and products to safeguard all educational institutions, from the earliest grades, all the way up to institutions of higher learning.

Whether it is managing the in-person and remote students and their mobile devices, to fostering a productive learning environment, to protecting sensitive student and research data, Cisco offers a wide range of solutions to meet your goals, and ensure an effective approach to your security vision.

There is more to a security solution than the platform. The depth of information, and flexibility and pragmatism is key towards a full security approach. As described by the CISO of Brunel University, “Cisco backs its products with engineers who are at the top of their game”.

Source: cisco.com

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Meet the Enchanted Virtual Classroom

Cisco Networking Academy enables distance learning

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the traditional education model for millions of students and teachers around the world, including the nearly 12,000 learning institutions worldwide that participate as Cisco Networking Academy schools. 

The Networking Academy curriculum has been delivered via a hybrid model of in-person and online teaching. So when the pandemic hit, and while many schools, teachers, and students experienced widespread disruption and challenges in making the move to a 100 percent online model, the Networking Academy transition was manageable, and students and teachers were already equipped to operate exclusively online effectively.

Beyond the move to a fully online model, the events of 2020 pushed our engineering teams at Cisco to look for new ways to offer both students and teachers more immersive experiences and better learning engagement opportunities.  

Working hand in hand with Networking Academy instructors, our engineers delivered significant enhancements to Cisco Packet Tracer’s physical mode. Combined with significant increases in the availability of our Cisco Webex collaboration suite, our teams have created what we like to think of as an “Enchanted Virtual Classroom.” 

Welcome to a world of enchantment

The concept of enchantment in the digital world – and specifically the notion of “Enchanted Objects” – has been introduced by David Rose, product designer and lecturer at the MIT Media Lab. According to Rose, Enchanted Objects can be brought to life thanks to specific design guidelines for immersive Internet of Things (IoT) environments that align with fundamental human desires including “omniscience, telepathy, safekeeping, immortality, teleportation, and expression.” 

Rose believes that IoT sensors and actuators embedded in our physical environments can lead to enchanting experiences. 

Within Cisco Networking Academy, we are applying this design philosophy to distance learning. 

Fusing Packet Tracer – which invokes senses of safekeeping (a safe place to make mistakes), omniscience (creating networks from scratch), and expression (telling networking stories relevant to their lives), with Webex – which invokes senses of telepathy (insight into how others think) and teleportation (video collaboration as if we were sharing the same physical space doing labs together) enables useful, purpose-driven, even enchanting distance learning experiences. 

We seek to help address issues that arise from the loss of physically co-located instructors, students, and equipment. A simulation-based microworld, like Packet Tracer 8.0, with enhanced physical mode representations, used in tandem with collaboration software such as Webex, may have synergies that lead to effective and delightful experiences. 

The Charm of Packet Tracer

The new version of Packet Tracer (PT 8.0), released last month, approximates the experiences of the real-world job and classroom lab interactions as shown in Figure 1. 

Using the “Geo” mode (Figure 2) students can explore floor plans, maps, and other background images that help provide context heat maps showing Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth signals, as well as manipulable cables. This representation encourages tracing a packet across various physical locations. 

With the new Packet Tracer capabilities, students can build “What-if” models, following their own inquiry, using Packet Tracer as a “virtual Lego kit.” Students can also be assigned structured design, configuration, and troubleshooting challenges, using activities that were authored via Packet Tracer’s Activity Wizard and which are automatically graded (as shown in Figure 3). 

Students can interact with a shelf (inventory system) at right, having to choose amongst devices. They can also interact with a pegboard, having to choose among cables, place devices at specific locations on tables (centre) and equipment racks (left), as well as power devices and read status LEDs.

The magic of learning through Webex 

Webex is now integrated within the NetAcad.com platform, making relevant features for teaching more readily available to Networking Academy instructors, including:

◉ Whole-class, lecture-style interaction via video and audio

◉ Breakout lab-group style interaction

◉ Screen sharing with remote annotation, desktop mouse and keyboard sharing, and whiteboarding

◉ Attendance, chat, polling, and notes

We believe Webex can enable interactions like “over the shoulder” coaching and peer-to-peer group collaboration within Packet Tracer labs, creating powerful synchronous and asynchronous distance learning experiences.

We know that human-to-human relationships are central to learning. Cisco Networking Academy is pioneering better distance learning by making enchanted virtual classrooms with playful, simulation-based, collaborative educational interactions a reality. And this is just the beginning.

Source: cisco.com

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Ransomware in Education: How to use your Network to Stay Ahead of Attacks

Educational institution systems store a large amount of sensitive data, including student and employee records. They rely heavily on these systems for day-to-day operations. So any disruption or loss of access can be a game changer. But these same institutions also often have tight budgets and can’t afford to employ large security teams. That’s one reason they’re perceived as easy and lucrative targets by online adversaries.

A typical response may be to deploy multiple security technologies to block threats from entering your organization at various attack vectors, and you should continue to do so. However, just relying on these techniques isn’t enough since 100% prevention is not possible in today’s complex threat landscape. That’s where continuous monitoring of your network’s behavior comes in. By using this approach, you can help detect and respond to a ransomware attack more quickly and effectively.

How to stay ahead of cyber threats

Your network is a source-of-truth of every activity – normal or malicious. Adversaries must use your network in order to carry out their malicious objectives. Because of this, collecting and analyzing your network telemetry is an effective way of detecting advanced threats, like ransomware. Here’s how it helps you.

◉ Detect threats early by pinpointing suspicious behavior. Ransomware attacks are generally initiated through methods like a phishing email or exploitation of a vulnerability. It might involve behavior such as port scanning, command-and-control (C&C) communication back to the attacker network, etc. Whatever means the attackers use, the activity touches the network. By using behavioral modeling, this kind of activity can be easily detected. You can also create custom security policy alerts to detect restricted communications such as use of SMB protocol, or access to sensitive data servers from outside the network. So even if the ransomware is an unknown strain and has infected the organization, the anomalous behavior will give the attackers away.

◉ Correlate local alerts to global campaigns. Attackers often reuse ransomware strains to infiltrate multiple organizations. An effective network security analytics solution is powered by industry-leading threat intelligence that has the knowledge of all the malicious domains, servers, campaigns, and other indicators of compromise. Using multiple analytical techniques like statistical modeling and machine learning, billions of network sessions within your organization can be processed and correlated to global campaigns, in order to pinpoint attacks and then quickly remediate.

◉ Perform forensic analysis for incident response. Your organization has been infected, and you have been immediately notified through alerts of the ransomware attack. Now what? Time is of the essence and your security teams need to answer questions like what machines have been infected, what was the source of the attack, and where are communications occurring? Because you have a record of every network communication, you can begin from the alert and investigate back in time to conduct a thorough forensic analysis to answer those questions and contain the ransomware.

Industry-leading network visibility and security analytics

The capabilities described above are offered by Cisco’s network traffic analysis solution, called Cisco Stealthwatch. It provides enterprise-wide visibility, from the private network to the public cloud, and applies advanced security analytics to detect and respond to threats in real-time.

By using a combination of behavioral modeling, machine learning, and global threat intelligence, Stealthwatch can quickly (and with high confidence) detect threats such as:

◉ C&C attacks
◉ Ransomware
◉ DDoS attacks
◉ Illicit cryptomining
◉ Unknown malware
◉ Insider threats.

With a single, agentless solution, you get comprehensive threat monitoring across your data center, branch, endpoint, and cloud. Plus, it can also analyze encrypted traffic for threats, without any decryption, using our proprietary Encrypted Traffic Analytics technology.

Stealthwatch can detect ransomware hiding in encrypted traffic, and can also correlate it to global campaigns like WannaCry.

By deploying Stealthwatch, you can turn your network into a “threat sensor” by simply collecting telemetry such as NetFlow. And there is no need to deploy multiple agents. Stealthwatch can be deployed easily. Best of all, it scales automatically with your infrastructure, growing as your needs grow.

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Disruption in Our Learning Cultures Develops Families as Learning Partners

Today, technology is a bullet train rapidly transforming every sector in society. Disruption is evident in companies like Airbnb and Lyft that have completely rearranged how we vacation and commute. This disruption not only shifts what we do, but impacts our mindset, as well. We think differently about lodging when we vacation now. Our boundaries and expectations change when we order a ride. So, when we think of the disruption technology has caused in education, we must ask ourselves: What is the mind shift that accompanies this change?

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Refreshed Wireless and Design Certifications Offer Up-to-date Skills for IT Professionals

As the technology landscape continues its rapid transformation, those who work in the industry are faced with the constant challenge of keeping their skills up-to-date. To address the needs of professionals looking to build, assess and continually reinforce wireless technology or network design expertise throughout the spectrum of their career, we are announcing updates to three of our training and certification offerings: CCDA, CCDP and CCNA Wireless.

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