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| Tony Soprano | Jun 18 2008, 01:44 AM |
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. The NCCU IT MANAGER and school DATABASE ADMINISTRATOR surf for PORN at work and store it on school computers. Porn downloads cost NCCU workers jobs By Lisa Rossi : The Herald-Sun lrossi@heraldsun.com Jun 18, 2008 DURHAM -- Three state university employees were removed from their jobs after being accused of making university computers vulnerable to viruses by downloading pornography and other improper material, according to a report issued Tuesday by the N.C. Office of the State Auditor. Two information technology employees at N.C. Central University and one former NCCU employee who was working at N.C. State University misused university networks and computers, according to State Auditor Leslie Merritt. Merritt did not reveal the names of the employees in the audit. NCCU spokeswoman Miji Bell declined to identify them, saying it was a personnel matter exempt from disclosure, and N.C. State spokesman Keith Nichols cited privacy laws in refusing to provide the name of the employee at that university. One of the NCCU employees had 68 hits to a Web site called Nudetube.com on his university computers. The N.C. State employee estimated he downloaded 400 movies onto university-issued computers since March of 2006. The auditor has reported some of the findings to the FBI, State Bureau of Investigation, U.S. attorney, and other agencies for possible investigation. Those include unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials, unauthorized access to servers at another university, and the failure to properly verify new employees' employment and education history. Other violations include possible breaches of federal copyright laws, intentional deletion of information to hide inappropriate use, and an employee granting a friend access to a university server, the auditor said. The auditor's report contained several recommendations -- including taking strong disciplinary action against the employees who were targets of the audit -- to improve security in the universities' information technology departments. Those include calls for the universities to: -- Perform reviews to determine whether unauthorized materials are being distributed. -- Review whether the universities networks were harmed by IT employee misconduct. -- Reinforce to IT employees the need for network security. N.C. Central officials took immediate disciplinary action against its two employees, and terminated their employment, Chancellor Charlie Nelms wrote in a letter to the auditor dated June 11. The N.C. State employee was placed on leave during the investigation, and then resigned, said Chris Mears, a spokesman with the auditor's office. Both N.C. State and NCCU leaders said they have not uncovered harm to university systems as a result of the employee misconduct. Nelms said the NCCU information technology department will install software that can monitor illegal downloading of movies, music and games by all university personnel. N.C. State Chancellor James Oblinger said periodic reviews of the university data networks were not feasible. "There is no practical way to distinguish between copyrighted material downloaded or stored for legal academic or administrative purposes from potentially illegal material," he wrote the auditor. At NCCU, the IT manager and database administrator were found to have pornography downloaded on university computers, amid other violations. An IT manager at NCCU is paid between $67,600 to $95,000 annually, and a database administrator generally earns between $74,880 and $84,375 annually, according to the N.C. Office of State Personnel. The audit also revealed that the NCCU database administrator lied about getting a degree in computer science. Instead, he was still attending school online and had fewer than half the earned credit hours he claimed, auditors confirmed. The N.C. State employee, an operations and systems analyst accused of inappropriately using university networks and computers, was responsible for protecting university networks from unauthorized use, auditors wrote. His salary range is between $38,625 and $85,088, state records show. The report said when examining computers used by the NCCU information technology manager, auditors "were able to locate 68 hits to a site called 'Nudetube.com' originating under his user name. He denied any knowledge of that without giving a plausible explanation," the auditor said. The NCCU database administrator "also said that he downloaded pornographic material on a 'semi-regular' basis but knew of no university policy prohibiting that. However, he said that he knew that the state had a policy prohibiting that activity," the audit said. Auditors also found pornographic and violent materials on computers assigned to the N.C. State employee. That employee made several attempts to hide the computer material in question, the auditor said. Merritt said the audit came about as a result of Nelms' reporting computer misuse to UNC general administration. UNC administrators in turn reported it to the state auditor's office. "Our internal control processes worked," said Bell, the NCCU spokeswoman. Information technology employees at the universities told audit investigators that they used university networks to download movies and other items because larger university bandwidth allows for faster downloads than home computers. The data base administrator at NCCU said he learned about the downloading method from a former university employee who had a reputation while at the university as a "movie guy." http://heraldsun.southernheadlines.com/durham/4-959904.cfm |
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| NCCU IT MANAGER and Database Administrator · DUKE LACROSSE - Liestoppers | |
6:35 PM Nov 30
