WATERVILLE -- One of the technology industry's biggest
names is using one of the country's smallest colleges to showcase
its Internet server.
For the second time in five years, Thomas College has been
presented as a case study by Microsoft Corp. as a leading user of
its Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2004.
Thomas is one of only 12 organizations nationwide picked for the
showcase studies, which advertise how use of their servers can be
maximized.
"We've been using their ISA server since 2000," said Christopher
H. Rhoda, the college's vice president for information technology
services. "They found out that we really pushed the system hard, and
their technology (staff) suggested they write a case study on us."
It took about four phone calls and a few exchanges of e-mails for
the case study, which now joins bigger organizations like Allianz
Life Insurance Co. and Frontier Airlines on Microsoft's case studies
Web page, at
www.microsoft.com/isaserver/evaluation/casestudies/2004.asp.
For Rhoda, the Microsoft recognition is just the latest in a
16-year career that has put Thomas College on the map for
technological innovation. His role is to build ever more efficient
programs for the school, but technological security has increasingly
dominated the job's concerns.
When Rhoda -- a computer science graduate from Thomas himself --
first began working at the college, he estimated 1 percent of his
time was devoted to security issues. Now, protecting Thomas'
computers takes a fifth of his time, and that rate is still
climbing.
"Last fall, students were coming in with the Sacer and Blaster
viruses," he said. "We had to shut down the server a few times for a
few hours at a time. Each year, about three dozen students bring
computers already infected (to school)."
Even at a snow-covered campus in what some might describe as a
remote corner of the United States, the world comes to Thomas in the
form of computer virus attacks.
The school has only 30 common computer terminals that are all
attack-proofed; the vulnerability comes from students who bring
their own machines and hook them up to the school infrastructure. At
any one time, there could be several hundred to 1,500 people using
the network, Rhoda said.
This is where the Microsoft server steps in.
It allows Rhoda to monitor and control nearly every facet of
computer usage at Thomas. The server helps users -- it speeds up the
rate at which Web pages are downloaded by saving them to local
caches.
But its more formidable feature is protecting the college system
from external attacks, and preventing internal malfunctions from
leaking into the World Wide Web. With viruses getting more
sophisticated each day, Rhoda now has to deal with Spyware that
steals passwords and users' traffic patterns, and "zombies" --
viruses that lie dormant for a long time before activating without
warning.
The server tracks data such as users' sessions, processing unit
usage, caching records. It shows how many viruses are scooting
around the school network. It can tell the top Web pages being
downloaded on campus, as well as who the top users in school are,
and which browsers they use. And it can drill down to which student
is introducing the virus.
And Microsoft is now banking on the college's maximized use of
its server, to advertise how it can best be used.
"Thomas was one of the first colleges in the United States to
build a Web-based information systems infrastructure," its case
study said. "The system safeguards its internal administrative
systems."
And the record proves it -- it's been six years since the college
has been infected, Rhoda said.
Chuin-Wei Yap -- 861-9253
cyap@centralmaine.com