Activities of the IT Center

 

With the increasing spread of digital end devices such as smartphones and tables, the risk of attacks is also rising. In addition to industrial espionage, data theft in the private sphere (passwords, e-mail addresses, etc.) is also steadily increasing.

While IT security used to be understood as the correct functioning and availability of a service, IT security today tries to avoid a much broader spectrum of threats. These include the misuse of IT systems, sabotage, espionage as well as fraud and theft. With the advent of e-mail and later the World Wide Web, the new technologies have also found their way into the private lives of many citizens. Online banking, online shopping, dating and contact with the authorities are just some of the activities for which we rely on IT.

We encounter threats, for example, in the form of force majeure, operating errors, malware (such as viruses, Trojans or worms) and phishing. These often occur in combination with so-called social engineering.

 

The IT Center cannot completely prevent attacks on IT and thus on your or RWTH Aachen University's data. Attacks take place every day and the procedures are constantly adapting. However, the IT Center can reduce the chances of success of such attacks through a variety of measures. Where attacks are nevertheless successful, further measures can significantly reduce the impact in terms of duration and scope.

However, this is only successful if everyone cooperates: Executives as well as IT administrators, all other employees and of course students of RWTH Aachen University.

The users of the IT infrastructure, i.e. the employees and students, play a major and often underestimated role.

The IT Center supports IT security through a variety of measures and services. These are coordinated by a specially assigned and trained employee.

The service offerings with special reference to information security include:

• Operation of a central firewall and decentralized firewalls for the RWTH Aachen University facilities.
• Provision of the free virus protection software - SOPHOS including update service for students and employees.
• Operation of a powerful web filter infrastructure to protect against harmful content when surfing the Internet.
• VPN server for protected access to internal resources from outside the RWTH networks.
• Provision of certificates for use as personal certificates (e.g. for encrypted or signed e-mails) or for server certificates.
• Monitoring and detection of suspicious systems by means of stored algorithms for detecting infected end devices (Blast-o-mat).