®
NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release Contact: Helen A. Sims
18 January 2008 Phone: 919.838.8570
helen_sims@infosentry.com www.infosentry.com
Public Confidence in Education
Institutions’ Business Continuity
and Disaster Recovery Capabilities Jumps in 2008
Public
confidence in the abilities of the nations’ education institutions to continue
in operation during major emergencies and recover from disasters jumped in
2008. This finding came from a 2008 opinion survey released today by InfoSENTRY
Services, Inc., a national information technology consulting firm located in
The
company’s president, M. Glenn Newkirk, said, “While overall confidence in major
U.S. institutions’ abilities to prepare for disasters and continue operation
after disasters remained broadly low, education institutions have seen a rise
in overall public confidence in their abilities from a Net Score of 28% in
2006, to 29% in 2007, and to 37% in 2008.
This jump was a statistically significant increase of nine points in our
net confidence ratings. Overall, in our 2008 survey, education institutions’
confidence scores remained lower than scores for hospitals and medical clinics,
banks and financial institutions, and local governments, but higher than scores
for large corporations, state governments, and the Federal government.”
InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. contracted Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), a leading national opinion research company, to ask a random sample of US respondents who are 18 years old and over the following two questions in ORC’s January CARAVAN® surveys in 2006, 2007, and 2008:
“Now I am going to read you some types of
organizations that have to deal with emergencies and disasters. As I read each one, using a scale of 1 to 5,
where 1 means very low confidence and 5 means very high confidence, please tell
me how confident you are that each organization can keep itself in operation
during major emergencies or can recover from serious disasters. [ROTATE ITEMS].”
“Now I am going to read you some types of
organizations and governments. As I read
each one, using a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means very low confidence and 5
means very high confidence, please tell me how confident you are that the
information in these organizations’ computer systems is accurate and secure.
[ROTATE ITEMS]”
In both instances, the interviewers read a list of institutions prepared by InfoSENTRY and ORC. Interviewers rotated the order in which they presented the institutions from interview to interview to eliminate potential bias from the order in which respondents heard the specific institutions.
Newkirk explained the process for computing the Net Scores, “By aggregating the positive confidence scores (4 and 5) and subtracting from them the negative confidence scores (1 and 2) on the 1 – 5 scale, we derived education institutions’ Net Scores.”
Figure 1 graphically presents summary results from the surveys in all three years.
Figure 1
Trends in Public Confidence in
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Capabilities
Newkirk
continued with an analysis of the data trends. “The increase from a Net Score
of 29% in 2007 to 37% in 2008 for the continuity and recovery capabilities was
a result of the “positive” scores showing slight, statistically significant
increases and the “negative” scores also showing statistically
significant improvement. The data showed very few consistent, statistically
significant variations across gender, income, household size, or number of
children in the household.”
“However,
the data showed an interesting change in attitudes among respondents with
different education backgrounds. In the three surveys, Net Scores for
continuity and recovery capabilities for persons with at least some college
education generally ranged from 26% to 34%. However, Net Scores for persons
with only a high school education or incomplete high school education jumped
from 27% to 43%, a statistically significant increase.”
Newkirk
noted another interesting finding for the continuity and recovery Net Scores.
“Net Scores were significantly higher in some regions of the country than in
others. In the South, the net confidence in education institutions’ continuity
and recovery capabilities was the highest of all regions in 2006 at 35%. By
2008, the South’s net confidence in schools and colleges had jumped to 47%. Net
Scores in the Northeast and North Central states were stable in 2008 at 28% and
37%, respectively, relatively unchanged from their scores in 2006 and 2007. In
stark contrast, the Net Score for continuity and recovery capabilities in
schools and colleges in the West were dismally low at 15% in 2006. The score
climbed to only 25% in 2008.”
Newkirk believes that the reason for the overall
increase in confidence in education institutions’ continuity and capability
capabilities lies partially in the aftermath of both Hurricane Katrina and the
Virginia Tech slayings. He stated, “After two very different tragedies that
occurred within two years of each other, it is likely that people believe that
schools and universities have taken steps to improve their ability to continue
operations and recovery quickly in the face of such disasters. They hear about
steps taken to return schools and colleges to operation in the
The survey results for confidence in information security and accuracy in education institutions paint a somewhat different picture than do the data for confidence in education institutions’ continuity and recovery capabilities. Newkirk noted, “In terms of overall ranking of Net Scores for confidence in information security, education institutions’ scores of 32%, 29%, and 31% in the three measurement years still place them behind banks, financial institutions, hospitals, and medical clinics. However, they are ahead of large corporations and all other levels of government. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the scores are statistically unchanged over the three surveys, showing no overall improvement. This statistical consistency was the case with all institutions covered in our surveys.”
“Once again, we saw very little statistically significant variation in these information security Net Scores across gender, age, income, racial, education, and household size demographic groups. However, as before, we saw statistically significant differences in the Net Scores across the country’s regions. The information security confidence scores in the Northeast were relatively static in the low-to-mid twenties. The Net Scores in the West were down in the low twenties and high teens, with a dismally low 18% in 2007. The North Central states saw a substantial drop in Net Scores from 40% to 25% between January 2007 and January 2008. On the spectrum’s other end, the Net Scores for education institutions’ information security confidence in the South started at 39% in 2006 and ended at 40% in 2008.”
Newkirk continued, “It is likely that the lack of
overall improvement in confidence in information security at schools and
colleges and the variation among the regions were both tied to media reports of
data breaches, losses, and thefts at institutions over the past couple of years
such as Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon,
Yale, the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, Villanova,
University of Iowa, University of Northern Iowa, Western Illinois University,
University of Michigan, University of Missouri, Ohio State University, Montana
State, Metropolitan State College in Colorado, the University of New Mexico,
University of California at Los Angeles, University of California--San
Francisco, Texas A&M, Radford University, and the University of Virginia.
There were also widely reported breaches of public school information systems
by students just playing around or trying to change grades.”
In
conclusion, Newkirk stated, “Regardless of their veracity or severity, these
reports will continue to weigh on public confidence in colleges’ and
universities’ information security and accuracy. There are only two steps that
education institutions can take to improve public confidence in their
information security capabilities. They can make real improvements in their
information security capabilities and they can carry out awareness activities
in their communities. However, they cannot do the second step before they do
the first. It simply will not work.”
This report presents the findings of
telephone surveys conducted among national probability samples of 1004 adults
in January 2006, 1017 adults in January 2007, and 1018 adults in January 2008.
All respondents were 18 years of age and older, living in private households in
the continental
Interviewing for this Opinion Research
Center CARAVAN® Survey was completed during the periods January 12 – 15, 2006,
January 4 – 7, 2007, and January 4 – 7, 2008.
InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. is an
independent information technology services firm based in
The survey
questions and survey response set of the survey are Copyright 2008, by
InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. All rights reserved. The InfoSENTRY logo and
InfoSENTRY® are registered trademarks of InfoSENTRY Services, Inc. CARAVAN® is
a registered trademark of Opinion Research Corporation.
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