An Analysis on Security of e-Learning Platforms in Romanian Higher Education

The adoption of e-learning technologies brings real benefits to companies that will achieve high productivity as their employees will have wider knowledge and skills, as well as to educational institutions that will provide pupils and students a complex education using modern technologies. In this paper the authors analyze the current state of the e-learning platforms implemented at the Romanian higher education level. The analysis starts from the Report on the National Academic Metaranking Exercise, a ranking achieved in 2016 by the Ministry of National Education to identify the level of visibility of Romanian universities in the relevant international rankings. This paper takes into account the extent to which the best-rated Romanian universities have implemented e-learning platforms as support in the development of the educational process. There are presented some aspects of the used e-learning platforms and their vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks based on the statistics provided by CVE Details, a database with information retrieved from NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). Using updated software versions of e-learning platforms, HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) protocol for encrypted information transfer and securely storage of sensitive information (usernames, passwords, or other personal data of users) are benchmarks which will be comparatively analyzed. The paper also contains an estimate of the extent to which the main actors involved in education (both the professors and the personnel at the level of university management or government) are open to the introduction of electronic technologies as methods for disseminating information. A questionnaire on e-learning issues was designed and its results are analyzed to identify opportunities for improving and developing education and research in Romanian academic field.