Campus technology departments are under more pressure to provide Internet security to students, according to a recent survey.

The annual Campus Computing Survey was conducted from August to October 2004 by surveying universities and colleges about what the most important technological concerns are at their schools.

According to Kenneth Green, director of the Campus Computing Project, the group surveyed the senior technology officers at 516 institutions, including Marquette.

The survey focused on many aspects of campus technology, such as network security, illegal media downloading, open source software, wireless networks and campus Internet portals.

Almost 60 percent of the schools surveyed said they had raised their budgets for network security over the last year.

Although Marquette does not keep a separate budget for computer security, it is still a major concern to the university, according to Kathy Lang, chief information officer for Information Technology Services.

"I cannot comment on the types of protection we have for security reasons, but I can tell you that we do use McAfee virus protection, which I consider security, and we encourage students to keep their systems updated with security patches provided by (Microsoft) Windows Update, which we also apply to our own systems," Lang said.

Illegal media downloading over popular peer-to-peer file sharing networks, such as Kazaa and Napster, was included in the survey. To combat illegal downloading, some schools are implementing appropriate-use policies, according to the survey.

Over three-fourths of the schools surveyed, including Marquette, have such policies.

Some students said Marquette's policy could be clearer, though.

"Yeah, I read it, but I didn't understand it," said College of Communication freshman Dan Dragan in reference to Marquette's Acceptable Use of E-Resources Policy, which is available on the Marquette Web site on the ITS page under "Strategy & Policy."

The survey also discussed the use of open source programming.

"Open source software is software not written by companies selling the program," Lang said. "The company may have a base program they give away for free, but you have to write your own programs. Many schools are using this software for their student systems."

Marquette currently does not use any type of open source software and does not have any plans to begin using open source applications in the future, Lang said.

The survey also covered wireless networking and universities.

Over half of the schools surveyed have strategic plans for wireless networks, and over 80 percent have some kind of wireless network already up and running.

At Marquette, roughly 30 percent of the campus has wireless Internet access, and there are plans to create even more wireless hotspots, especially in high demand areas.

According to Lang, ITS is currently researching where wireless access will expand. The expansion should include the residence halls, she said.

"We are currently working with (the Office of) Residence Life to identify where it would make sense to expand the wireless access," Lang said.

The final survey item covered regarded the use of campus portals, such as CheckMarq at Marquette. Thirty-seven percent of schools surveyed reported they had opened portals for students in the past year.

Portals, however, ranked lowest on the list of most important IT infrastructure components on the survey.

"Some institutions do not have a vision as to what a portal will provide and in that case it wouldn't be a priority item for them," Lang said in an e-mail. "Marquette sees the portal as a way to simplify navigation to self-service items for the campus constituents."