Dive Brief:
- Symantec’s 2016 Internet Security Threat Report found education tied with business for the second-most-breached subsector; 6.6% of all reported cybersecurity incidents in 2015 trace back to education institutions.
- Ed Tech reports the worsening ranking, up one place from the 2015 report, indicates IT leaders on campuses need to shift from avoidance to anticipation when it comes to threats.
- Holistic cybersecurity is a best practice that connects the work in the IT department with faculty, staff and student users to ensure the practices and technologies in place are not undermined by the people who use the networks.
Dive Insight:
Colleges and universities are particularly sensitive to cyber threats because they have so much data, they maintain relatively open networks and they invest comparatively little in protecting it. Holistic security practices ensure proper policies are in place to manage data, adequate technology protects it, and training ensures users understand their roles in the process. Even the best security teams can be brought down by a handful of users who succumb to phishing attempts and hand over their own passwords.
The key to the modern IT security plan is comprehensiveness. And a growing number of schools are following up the preventive measures with insurance policies that help limit the damage of an attack.