Dive Brief:
- Ed Tech Magazine profiles two strategies for colleges and universities to prevent data breaches and to reduce higher education's standing as the second-most vulnerable industry to hacking behind healthcare.
- Firewall establishment and multiple authentication steps for individual users and specific administrative roles for all users are the best ways to prevent malicious or inadvertent access or exposure of critical data.
- More than 500 campuses reported some form of data breach between 2006 and 2013,
Dive Insight:
Earlier this summer, dozens of college and university websites were hacked with links placed to online gambling websites, exposing the kind of vulnerabilities that are present for a variety of college campuses. And while most campuses are not able to employ or contract the kind of IT protection talent necessary to fortify the thousands of points of entry between student and faculty access, campuses can use intensive education and awareness-building to ensure stakeholder understanding of their role in data breach prevention.
Moreover, a stronger tech communication strategy makes campus networks more productive, which according to some observers, can help campuses to realize millions in faster processing for research and project management.