ThreeFacts You Should Know About Campus ICT Infrastructures

There are three things we consider very important for you to know about Campus ICT Infrastructures:-

1. A stable Campus ICT Infrastructure is the foundation for all administrative and academic ICT services that your institutions provides to staff, faculty, students and external suppliers and customers. The campus ICT infrastructure includes optical fiber backbone, the structured cabling of all the buildings (offices, labs, classroom), WiFi access points, computer labs and computers, the server room/data centers with full air-conditioning, stable and clean power supply that includes KPLC power, backup generators, Uninterruptible Power Supplies and voltage stabilizers, and physical security that might include Cameras, and good PBX (for voice) and Internet access.  In general, this is a heavy ICT investment, and apart from the computers should be part of office remodelling or campus buildings.
2. The Quality of ICT staff pipeline and main determinant of the quality and stability and Cost of the Campus ICT Infrastructure as perceived by the end-users (i.e., the ICT director to provide IT leadership, network and systems administrators/engineers to support and maintain the network infrastructure, end-user computing support staff, electrical power technicians, cybersecurity staff and ICT project managers among others). It is very important to create a pipeline of ICT staff – starting with ICT trainees/interns, junior technical staff , middle-level ICT staff years ICT staff) and senior ICT staff . The ICT director must have had more than 5 years technical experience and must also understand the higher education and/or research business of your institution (at least 3 years’ experience in higher education at a senior level). It is important to weed out unproductive or unresponsive ICT staff by year 2.
3. Institutional Cybersecurity Policies and National Cybersecurity Policy requires that you know who is on your campus network. That means all the users of your wired or wireless campus network must be authenticated and authorized based on your access policies. This assumes you user identity system or a database of your users. So develop a comprehensive cybersecurity policy and continually create awareness among users of the cybersecurity threats (they need to login). ICT has many benefits but it also has risks that need to be managed. As the CEO, you are the commander-in-chief of your Cybersecurity Forces – lead them!