My Library and Cybersecurity

 

Cybersecurity. Not a day goes by without hearing some story about cybersecurity and the issues that pertain to it. Often, it seems as if it is the larger corporations and businesses, websites, banks, and so forth. However, something came up during our discussions in my graduate class, Social Media & Informatics, about security issues in our own libraries.  This is something I never though of before. Is our library server in our district safe and secure? What about individual user information? Is our school district even monitoring any of this?  The answer to all of these questions? I do not know. In fact, it appears my of the individuals in our technology department do not know, which is rather disturbing. The initial response for me was to contact Destiny (our library opac software system). So, I did just that! There answer? As quoted, "you need to speak with your technology department and system administrator that handles the accounts and distribution of the software on your servers." Hmmm.....

Well, I still do not have an answer after several more inquirers. Just to get an idea of how safe the accounts were, I asked a couple of students (53) some basic questions:

1. Do you think your library information is secure?

2. Have you shared any of your library account information with anyone?

3. Would you know who to go to report any type of unusual or suspicious activity?

A majority answered yes to #1 and #2 (68%) and no to #3 (96%). Hmmm... let's think about this for a minute. Students feel their accounts are secure but have shared information about their accounts with other people. Doesn't sound too secure to me! And, they wouldn't know who to go to if there was any type of odd activity??!!  

I am not an information or cybersecurity professional yet, but the answers to the above questions seem to be red flags. Actually, all of this seems to be a red flag!