SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) – Drury University partnered with the city of Springfield to ensure its network is guarded against malicious hackers.
The process is called a network penetration test, and it’s when an organization hires white hat hackers to break into their systems.
This is the second year of the partnership between the city and the university. The test is conducted by a senior as part of their capstone project, and a faculty member oversees the process. During the test, the student attacks the network in the way that a malicious hacker would, looking for vulnerabilities that would allow a hacker to compromise assets. The student then writes a report on the findings, and the city uses that to improve its security.
Director of information systems for Springfield Neil Slagle says the idea behind that network penetration test is to reveal any issues.
There’s one test done externally from the city’s system. Slagle says the city then gave the student access to the internal part of the system to see what may be vulnerable to a cybersecurity attack.
”We had just a few things that he thinks that we should’ve concentrated on, but for the most part, he said that we had a…
