- Secure Computing
- Getting help
- Current programs
Current Yale University initiatives
in secure computing & data security
Data Scanning program
In late 2007 Yale initiated a campus-wide data scanning program designed to help individual Yale staff and faculty determine if their computers contain legally-protected personal financial or medical information. This kind of data security inventory is the first step in a wider program to protect Yale's data against loss, theft, or misuse by criminals and identity thieves.
Data classification system
To protect sensitive, legally-regulated, or highly confidential Yale data, the University has recently devised a three-level system of data security classifications to standardize the way we handle Yale data. The three-step data classification will help Yale faculty and staff determine the appropriate of legally necessary level of hardware and software security required.
Over the next year the new classification system will be closely aligned with the new Managed Workstation Program (see below) to provide standardized hardware and security solutions to faculty and staff users.
Infrastructure Capability Assessment Project (ICAP)
The ICAP Project is an effort to analyze and make recommendations to further strengthen the IT infrastructure and IT governance at Yale, with particular emphasis on the IT and network infrastructure capabilities required to support the future operating state, computing security requirements, and continued growth of the University. This work will include a review of specific areas of IT governance, architecture, solution delivery, and service management. The ICAP assessment process is currently ongoing, and will produce a findings report and roadmap recommendations in August of 2008.
Managed Workstation Program
Yale’s new Managed Workstation Program is designed to:
- Increase the security of Yale's data by providing secure and standardized hardware and software solutions appropriate for the level of data security required by the user.
- Substantially lower overall cost of ownership by managing the entire acquisition, distribution, and disposal process for personal computing hardware and widely-used software.
- Lower the costs and complexity of supporting the over 12,000 desktop, laptop, and mobile devices currently in use by staff and faculty at Yale.
- Reduce the amount of time people spend managing their workstations so they can spend more time using them.
In the current initial phase of the Managed Workstation program 1,500 Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows computers in carefully selected departments and administrative units will be managed by the program. We expect the full Managed Workstation program to be available to all faculty and staff by the summer of 2009.
