Penn State announced in May the computer systems at its College of Engineering were hit by Chinese hackers in a sophisticated two-year operation, and in June Harvard discovered a data breach in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Central Administration. These recent attacks against higher education are indicative of a larger cybercrime trend targeting educational institutions.
In contrast to financial institutions, higher education does not have a large budget to allot to cybersecurity, resulting in a higher risk of intrusion. If hackers access the vast amount of personally identifiable information (PII) available on a university’s servers and internal websites, students, alumni and prospects of an academic institution will find their private data compromised.
Compared to financial institutions and retailers, educational institutions store personal information that is more comprehensive in nature so there is much more at stake if a data breach occurs, including students’ financial information, social security numbers and medical histories.
As cybercrime continues to grow across channels and industries, it is trending to include educational institutions as a top target.
Attacks detected using real-time analysis and global shared intelligence show us that fraudsters are constantly developing sophisticated strategies to compromise digital identities.
School officials need to do their part to make sure that everyone’s private information is safe.
Universities should operate under the assumption that their PII has been compromised. Educational institutions, especially those with internal websites, need to leverage global shared intelligence to protect digital identities and ensure they’re not the next data breach victims in the news.
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