Recent trends in IT Security, as well as actual security incidents and "close calls" at UCI, have highlighted the need to get more proactively aggressive about finding vulnerabilities on our network before the real hackers do. Because of the enormity of our network and limited set of resources, OIT Security Team will employ periodic scans on all hosts connected to the UCI network looking for the lowest of the low hanging fruit, the most exploited and easiest to fix vulnerabilities hackers attempt to attack us with every day. In a way we can be seen as "white hat" or "good" hackers, looking for obvious problems and alerting the owners of those systems about the problems so that they can be fixed before a "black hat" or "evil" hacker finds the problem and causes real damage to our University. These scans will emulate some of the same tools and methods hackers use to find vulnerabilities to exploit. An analogy is that of a fire department performing a "controlled burn" of a forest or field in a controlled and safe environment, reducing the risk and damage of an out-of-control wildfire in the future.
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