Thirty-four years in IT - Security and firewalling (Part 4)

As a natural fit with running the network my team took on the task of securing the campuses and data centers, starting with firewalling the data centers from the rest of the network. We started fairly simply by just segmenting enterprise-wide servers from networks with users and students and restricting unfettered access to enterprise servers, database and systems. This gave us the ability to control access to the core servers and systems. As expected, this initial segmentation was resisted most by the system managers and DBA's who managed the individual servers and databases. They were convinced that the only way they could possibly do their job was if they had full access to everything all the time from everywhere - even if they had no idea how they were accessing the system. This was a pretty typical attitude at the time, and to me an indicator that they didn't actually know how their systems worked.

Thirty-four years in IT - The System Office, Novell Directories, and Building a State Backbone (Part 3)

Unfortunately nearly all the work we put into administrative and academic technology had to be abandoned. As a part of a larger initiative across the state, the various colleges and universities were being merged together into a single system that today is know as Minnesota State. In that process our college president retired, and the new college leadership de-emphasized the use of technology In business practices. Additionally, I recognized that at merger time most of the software that I had written would not usable. So I spent some time getting us off the software I wrote and on to other software that I knew would be used post merger.

In a lot of ways that was a set back for both the college and the students. It was many years before faculty and students would have the functionality we had in 1993.

Thirty-four Years in IT - Networking and Software Development (Part 2)

At the college we were extremely fortunate to have a president who had a very forward looking view of technology. In the mid 1980s he was already using personal computers regularly and had written some of his own software. Sometime around 1988 or so he described what he thought would be appropriate use of technology in education. He wanted all student records and curriculum to be electronic, all student testing to be electronic, and all grading to be electronic. He envisioned that students could walk up to a computer, login and access the curriculum, access and complete tests and quizzes, look up their progress toward graduation and any fees they may owe, and generate a transcript.

And of course he wanted it all tied together on a network.