ITHACA, N.Y. -- Steven J. Schuster has joined the Cornell University Office of Information Technologies as director of information technology security. His tenure began April 1.

"We are delighted Steve will lead Cornell in ensuring that our computer, data and network resources are managed in a way that protects these vital assets and exhibits responsible citizenship in the broader Internet community," said Polley A. McClure, vice president for information technologies. "Steve also will be directing Cornell Information Technologies' incident response activities, helping educate the campus about IT security issues and representing Cornell in the national community of IT security."

"My goal is to facilitate, coordinate and develop a comprehensive security program that will be non-disruptive to current Cornell operations yet address the increasing security risks that we face," said Schuster.

Most recently, Schuster was division manager of the Information Security Center at AT&T Labs, where his work included cyber-defense monitoring and incident response, intrusion detection systems, secure architecture development and security auditing. He has also worked on cryptology and large-scale data processing for the defense industry.

Schuster has a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Maryland and is currently working on a master's degree in computer science at John Hopkins University.

Kevin Unrue was the university's last security director. The position had been vacant since Jan. 2002.