High-Value Data Is the Target for Higher Education’s Cyberattackers
Higher education networks house extremely valuable student data, including:
- Personally identifiable information, such as Social Security numbers, birth dates and passport data. PII that is exposed can lead to identity theft and fraudulent activities in students’ names.
- Financial information, such as bank account and credit card numbers. For many younger students, this is pristine data that is sought after by hackers. Theft can lead to unauthorized financial transactions and financial fraud.
- Medical information, including student health records, insurance details, medical conditions, family histories and more. Exposure of these records can lead to privacy violations.
- Academic records, such as grades and transcripts. Tampering could affect the students’ academic futures while causing emotional stress.
In addition to student data, universities often house cutting-edge research data that could prove extremely valuable for cyber espionage. This occurred in 2022 when a group of Iranian hackers targeted researchers in a phishing scam and obtained access to nuclear research data.
DIG DEEPER: University leaders discuss how endpoint detection and response solutions spot threats.
Sprawling Networks and Open Environments Equal Vulnerability
College and university network environments are vast and complex. Educational information is shared with students, parents and third parties via email, productivity suites (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace for Education), collaboration tools (Zoom) and more, often with little regard for protection. Consider outdated systems, a multitude of websites hastily created without adequate attention to security, easy internet access across campuses and the expansion of remote learning. Any of these could have critical vulnerabilities that allow bad actors to exfiltrate data, hold it for ransom, and use it for identity fraud or sell it on the dark web.
University teams are overwhelmed trying to monitor all activity and account for every vulnerability in their complex environment. They look to penetration testing as an excellent approach for finding the most important vulnerabilities, determining how to prioritize them and schedule patching efforts to best protect student data.