Dive Brief:
- A recent survey from Dell and the Center for Digital Education shows 73% of campus officials reporting cybersecurity as a top concern, with 77% expecting to spend more on network security in the coming year.
- Of the respondents, 72% reported that data breaches are their top cyberattack concern, though 86% said their institution's ability to detect or block such an attack is average or higher and 80% said they were prepared or well-prepared to respond to a breach.
- Top vulnerabilities and threats include spam and phishing (70%), malware (61%), and outdated system and security controls (33%), with top recent incidents or breaches including viruses or worms (36%), spear phishing (31%), or intrusion/hacktivism (17%).
Dive Insight:
The top three areas for planned cybersecurity spending increases in the survey are in network security (55%), secure access to data and applications (44%), and user identity validation (39%).
Highlighting the need for increased attention to campus cybersecurity are the increasing number of cyberattacks on higher ed institutions. These incidents range from the malicious — data breaches at the University of Maryland, Auburn, Indiana University, and others — to the annoying, as with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks like those that hit Rutgers four times in the last year.
With that in mind, when colleges and universities take necessary measures to beef up security it shows current and prospective students, as well as their families, that they have measures in place to safeguard personal data. To help address these issues, Dell recommended in a Thursday webinar with Education Dive that institutions establish security baselines/roadmaps/priorities, choose a framework to use as a guide, conduct security roundtable discussions, get C-level buy-in, provide plenty of security patches and education, and secure endpoints.