Campus cybersecurity in the age of IoT and GDPR

Campus Cybersecurity is a perennial ‘top of mind’ topic for Higher Education. For the second time in three years, information security topped Educause’s annual Higher Ed CIO Top 10 IT Issues survey. This should come as no surprise according to the latest Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR). The report, which shows cybercriminal activity trending upwards, identifies the three most targeted industries as Financial and Insurance, Healthcare, and Education.

Information security in education has always been a competition between ease-of-use and total security; sometimes security wins, but most often ease-of-use is the priority. Throw in the new European privacy legislation known as General Data Protection Regulation, (GDPR) the introduction of a broad variety of IoT devices, and it is not surprising that Information Security, and protection of the institution’s reputation, is foremost on the minds of Higher Education CIO’s.

This focus on Information Security is timely. Never before has information technology played such a large role in education. Whether researching a topic for class or submitting classwork, information technology is at the heart of pedagogy, and the strategies implemented to identify and assist student academic success.

The 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report provides some very interesting insight on the attack vectors and motivations for malicious cyber activity.

 Security

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