Information has become valuable. The way information is used and the way information travels has changed. Chat rooms and bulletin boards, once thought harmless venues where people with common interests could contact each other, are now also trolled by spammers, con artists and would-be stalkers. An interested individual can find an alarming amount of personal information about himself or herself freely accessible to everyone on the internet, just by searching a few free databases. The accuracy of data, the permanence of information, the ownership of intellectual property, and the ease with which information can be copied, have all become subjects of debate and issues central to Information Security.
Some people argue for a return to pre-computing days.
They believe that computers are too complicated for the average person to run securely, the internet is too dangerous a place for serious research and communication, and people ought to wait for regulation to solve the problems. Other individuals refuse to believe that anything has really changed from the days of five and a half inch floppy disks that were truly floppy. To them, security issues are the responsiblity of the university to resolve, with as little inconvenience to the faculty as possible. We're beginning to learn that those same good manners and ethics we use in daily life are even more important in networked life, where it's much easier to cause offense or harm. Most universities feature abundant high-speed internet connectivity, individual users who know almost nothing about information security, and minimal protections.