Inept

The findings of our recent probe of the security of the University's computer network are nothing if not alarming. It seems that the University's Department of Management Information Systems is hopelessly ensnared in a humiliating pattern of technical impotence. This is most unfortunate as MIS has a singularly technical departmental charge. When it fails technically, it fails existentially.

With the revelation that students' credit card numbers and email passwords are subjected to gratuitous risk by MIS officials concerned more with "manageability issues" (read: increased work) than student safety from cyber pilferers, we must express our vociferous and unqualified objection. Yeshiva is quite literally, as our article observed, the laughingstock of the collegiate MIS world as a result of its appallingly porous system of network security. To be certain, the responsibility for effectively maintaining a heavily trafficked computer network can be onerous at times. But network maintenance is the raison d'etre of the University's MIS department. Whatever obstacles to network security exist must be surmounted.

Yeshiva MIS requires a shake up of sorts. Perhaps the self-serving, aging upper tier of entrenched MIS technical neophytes should be reviewed by an evaluative committee. The University MIS department must be made to keep pace with other universities. MIS ineptitude can be countenanced no longer.