The number of security breaches in our university's computer network has significantly increased in recent years. In the last few months we experienced severe damages brought about by increasingly and highly advanced malicious attacks. The situation will worsen in the near future if we fail to step up our effort in strengthening our network security measures. Prevention, detection, and rectification of security breaches are now top priority for the computing community of the university.

Based on our experience as well as reports from universities elsewhere, most of the network attacks and security loopholes are due to improper management of network servers that intentionally or unintentionally offer access or services to outsiders. These servers are easy targets to attack: to be used for spreading viruses, to bring down the campus network, or to launch attacks to others. Even worse, they may be hijacked by hackers to conduct criminal activities.

Apart from security problems, our investigations also revealed that some of our colleagues have set up their own office computers as private servers and offered access or services to outsiders without the consent from their department. Some even have allowed outsiders to download large files (including software, music, or movies) from their servers. These are considered as illegal activities as firstly they improperly use university's scarce and expensive resources to conduct non-university business, secondly they often cause damages to the university by jamming the network traffic, and thirdly they may put the university at risk of being charged for violations of intellectual property law.

In view of all these problems, it is required that all servers operating on the City University Network (CTNET) must be registered with the Computing Services Centre (CSC). Any unregistered server, once discovered, will be immediately barred from accessing the CTNET without further notice. To register your server, please complete the "Network Server Registration Form" obtainable from "Forms" under "e-Communication" menu of the CityU Intranet or simply go directly to

. Please note that whenever a computer offering network services, that are accessible by external or internal users, or only accessible by its owner remotely through campus network, is classified as a server.

As soon as you register your server, the CSC will provide you with continuous support including technical advice, information about software updates, security patches, timely security and virus alerts, etc. If you do not want to shoulder all the burdens of maintaining your own server, you may also consider moving your "site" to the university server. Once your site is hosted by the CSC, we will take care of all system and network management, backup, software updates, security and virus protection for you while you can still "own" the server and have all the facilities and freedom to provide services to your users as before. If you are interested in this, you may contact our Systems Manager, John Chan at ext. 8259.