DISTRICT TO HIRE WEB COP MANAGER WILL WATCH FOR INTERNET MISUSE.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LANCASTER - To help protect its ever-growing computer network against hackers and inappropriate uses, the Antelope Valley Union High School District will hire a network security manager for $70,000 a year.

In the past six months, people have attempted to hack into the district's computer system, and Web sites have been created with names similar to those of district schools but have contained what district officials term inappropriate material.

``We have a huge system with a lot of ports, therefore we are vulnerable. We have 200,000 hits a day on the Internet. We have close to 5,000 PCs in the district, and 150 to 200 locations on every school site where people can access the Internet or do e-mail,'' said Ray Monti, deputy superintendent. ``(The manager) is going to manage the network and software equipment that will allow us to maintain the integrity of the system.''

The Board of Trustees voted to approve establishing the position at Wednesday's board meeting. The position will cost about $35,000 in salary and benefits for the remainder of the 2000-01 fiscal year, and $70,000 for subsequent years.

``There has been an increase in inappropriate and unacceptable uses of our computer network systems. To protect our investment and the integrity of the system for our users, we believe that it is now time to establish'' the position, a district staff report said.

Monti said each school has been the target of hackers, whose identities remain unknown. Hacking presents an inconvenience for the district, which has to go in and spend money to correct changes made by hackers.

``Each school periodically on their Web page shows evidence of people trying to hack into the system from the outside,'' Monti said. ``They change things around. They might go into a Web site and you had it arranged in such a way or had words that said something, and you come in and it's changed. A lot of people do this for games. It's a challenge.''

The district also investigated the creation of Web sites that contained inappropriate materials, which had domain names similar to Web sites at two or three of the district schools.

The district was alerted to the problem after receiving calls from people in the community who had logged on to the sites, Monti said.

``What we found was that somebody, we don't know who, was registering domain names very close to ours,'' Monti said. ``We had to do an investigation. We had to go to the service that registers domain names and Web pages that are hosts. Some of the people who were hosting Web sites closed them down.''

There also has been an increase in inappropriate and unacceptable uses, such as employees accessing sites that are not educational or business-related, like game or shopping sites, Monti said.

A Highland High School art teacher and Academic Decathlon adviser was fired by the district in 1998 after technicians discovered sexually explicit photos on his classroom computer.

In his criminal case, Craig Fulladosa was accused of molesting a student and using a campus computer to download sexually explicit photos from the Internet.

He was sentenced in May to a year in jail and probation of fives years after pleading no contest to unlawful computer access and possession of child pornography.