Combating Cyber Threats in Higher Education

Educational institutions must also develop a comprehensive security strategy – with full visibility from the cloud to the network edge to the endpoints – to secure information and the infrastructure where it resides, while still encouraging and enabling an open and collaborative environment. This strategy should include understanding and leveraging industry best practices to effectively secure the network – including implementing user authentication, encrypting critical data, securing endpoints and the infrastructure, and potentially leveraging third-party managed security services when staff is sparse.

With this approach, educators can:

• Provide a secure e-learning environment for physical, virtual, and cloud platforms

• Safely manage confidential data and other digital content

• Protect against endpoint, mail, and Web threats

• Develop centralized standards to automate the deployment, security, and management of mobile devices

• Discover where data is stored across cloud, mobile, and on-premise environments, monitor how it is being used on and off the educational network, and protect it from leakage or theft

• Establish mobile security and management that ensures academic institution data is isolated and protected from malware and unauthorized access

• Implement endpoint management that discovers, manages, and controls computing devices requesting access to the academic network

By using a single, central management platform, higher education institutions have the know-how to quickly detect, respond and remediate to incidents, reducing operational costs, and proactively address known and emerging threats.

Education is undergoing a radical transformation. The proliferation of technology and connection points across campuses offers profound benefits to students, faculty, and administrators. However, this progress also comes with serious challenges. In response, universities must take a comprehensive approach to security, so they can focus on what they do best: preparing students for successful lives post-graduation.

Jennifer Nowell, National Director State, Local & Education, Symantec Public Sector, was appointed National Director of Symantec State, Local and Education business for Public Sector. Ms. Nowell is responsible for business strategy and execution across State & Local Government as well as Education for Symantec. Ms. Nowell is a proven leader with over 20 years of experience in Public Sector. Throughout her career, she has successfully managed high performing teams, delivered innovation solutions to customers and gained extensive government domain expertise.