Importance of Security Resilience in Higher Education
The sharing of ideas is a fundamental characteristic of Higher Education. However, the open, ever-evolving environment on the campuses of our colleges and universities leaves them vulnerable to cybersecurity threats. Universities manage enormous amounts of valuable information, and reports from around the globe show a rapid increase in the number of threat actors seeking to exploit that data.
According to a report from Quorum Cyber, the past year has seen an increase of over 60% in malicious cyber activity targeting higher ed. One survey found that 91% of Higher Education institutions reported experiencing a cyberattack in 2025. The trendline shows no signs of slowing down. Some current threat areas for Higher Ed include:
- Account takeover
- Ransomware
- Data Breaches
- Third-party/vendor risk
Higher education is built to be open and collaborative, which is great for learning and research. But this makes cybersecurity more difficult, because there are more users, devices, systems, and access points to protect.
For an institution, students are one of the most valuable assets and also their greatest area of vulnerability. According to EdScoop, most successful breaches involve a human element, such as social engineering, like phishing or mishandled credentials. These initial breaches lead to increasingly more damaging exploits down the road. The call to action for higher education is clear: security resilience must become a high priority for our institutions of learning.
Five Critical Focus Areas for Higher Education
- Identity and access management, including MFA and stronger protections against account takeover and credential compromise
- Security awareness training to help reduce the success of phishing and other social engineering attacks targeting students, faculty, and staff
- Regular penetration testing and vulnerability management to identify and remediate weaknesses before threat actors can exploit them
- Ransomware preparedness, including secure backup strategies, recovery planning, and well-developed incident response procedures
- Third-party and cloud security oversight to reduce risks associated with vendors, external platforms, and misconfigured systems or applications
Institutions need experienced vendors that can emulate real-world attack scenarios that may threaten their security infrastructure.
How pentests meet the needs of Higher Ed:
- Identifies weaknesses before threat actors can exploit them
- Simulates real-world attack scenarios against campus systems and infrastructure
- Helps uncover vulnerabilities that automated scans may miss
- Tests how well security controls, monitoring, and response procedures actually perform
- Reduces the risk of account takeover, ransomware, and data breaches
- Evaluates exposure created by third-party vendors and external integrations
- Helps protect sensitive student, faculty, financial, and research data
- Strengthens institutional security resilience in an increasingly targeted threat landscape
- Supports a proactive security strategy rather than reacting after an incident occurs
- Provides institutions with actionable recommendations to improve their overall security posture
- Helps security teams better understand how human error and social engineering can lead to larger compromises
- Reinforces trust among students, faculty, staff, and institutional partners by demonstrating a commitment to cybersecurity preparedness
To protect students, faculty, researchers, donors, and the innovation and progress these assets represent, institutions of higher learning must make security resilience a top priority and intentionally invest in methods to evaluate and strengthen their overall security posture.
Mary Getz
Mary is an account executive with a focus on higher education & non-profits.