In recent years, cyberattacks on government entities have garnered a lot of headlines. Yet higher education has arguably seen the greatest increase in breaches.
These cyberattacks cost colleges and universities millions of dollars. They also put student, faculty, and organizational data at risk, undermining faith in the institution itself.
In this post, we’ll explore recent incidents, examine why on-premises document management and process automation solutions are vulnerable, and suggest how cloud-based platforms provide a stronger defense for education.
Recent Cyberattacks in Education
“A cyberattack caused St. Louis County to shut down some computer systems used to look up court cases, issue charges and process people in custody at the jail,” stated a September 2023 story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. County Executive Sam Page said, “The cost of even a temporary shutdown of county government far exceeds the investment we need to make in cybersecurity. And yesterday we thought a shutdown was where we were headed.”
Missouri is far from the only state subjected to such a security breach. The University of Michigan was without full internet access for two days following a cyberattack.
“The incident comes weeks after the White House held a high-profile meeting with K-12 school administrators highlighting the need to protect schools against ransomware and other hacks ahead of the new school year,” stated a CNN news report. Later in the story, the writer revealed that “Lincoln College, a predominantly Black institution in central Illinois, was forced to close permanently last year after a cyberattack and the coronavirus pandemic crippled its finances.”
Federal Government Support for Cybersecurity
The US Department of Education established a Government Coordinating Council (GCC) and outlined five key elements:
- Enhancing Continuous Risk Management: Addressing the ever-evolving threat landscape by adopting a proactive approach to managing cybersecurity risks.
- Utilizing Analogies for Understanding: Leveraging lessons from physical world scenarios to comprehensively grasp and tackle cybersecurity challenges.
- Prioritizing and Implementing Mitigation Strategies: Identifying the most critical risks and applying effective mitigations such as multi-factor authentication, robust password policies, phishing prevention, and regular software updates.
- Building Resilience for Cyber Incidents: Developing and practicing cyber incident response plans to minimize the impact of potential cybersecurity breaches.
- Vendor Engagement for Enhanced Security: Encouraging vendors to invest in secure design principles, obtain cyber risk assurance certifications, and establish security vulnerability disclosure practices.
Bolstering Data Privacy and Security with Cloud
If schools and local governments are to withstand the more common and damaging impact of ransomware and other cyberattacks, it takes more than federal government support.
Colleges and universities, and state and local entities can proactively evaluate their existing document management, workflow, and electronic forms solutions. If these applications are hosted on-premises, the security risks are higher. Unpatched firewalls and servers can expose confidential data.
By contrast, cloud-based platforms offer robust, battle-tested security.
Data centers themselves are highly protected. Database and application servers are routinely updated and patched for all customers, and redundant backups ensure student, staff, and citizen data is recoverable even after information loss or natural disaster.
Cloud data centers conform to security standards like NIST 800-53 for government entities and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) for schools, colleges, and universities.
Assessing Cybersecurity Expertise
When considering document management (DMS) and process automation vendors, carefully examine their track records supporting the public sector.
Each vendor should provide a detailed rundown of their cybersecurity protocols and illustrate how it meets or surpasses regulatory mandates. Also request customer case studies. Their current customers should be able to explain how a cloud-based DMS and workflow system helped them solve data security.
Seek out vendors with a dedicated security or data privacy team led by experts. Employees holding qualifications like CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) have passed demanding training and evaluation processes.
Combined with a proven cloud-based applications, that expertise ensures users’ sensitive Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and critical organizational data stay safe. And that content will still remain available in the event of a ransomware attack or other kind of cyberattack.
Webinar on Higher Education Cybersecurity
To help IT/IS administrators, executives, and leaders make more informed decisions about the next steps of their content management strategy, cybersecurity roadmap, and disaster recovery plan, Softdocs hosted a free webinar.
Led by Tim Welsh, recently retired VP for Information Technologies at Kalamazoo Valley Community College, this informative roundtable helps education and government IT professionals:
- Understand the unique cybersecurity challenges in higher education and the role of cloud technologies in mitigating these risks
- Gain insights into effective deployment strategies and best practices to secure institutional data and maintain privacy using cloud services
- Learn about key regulatory compliance issues associated with cybersecurity in higher education and strategies for meeting these requirements in a cloud-based environment
- Consider the possible departmental and enterprise-wide impacts of AI in higher education
Securing your Digital Future: A Roundtable Discussion about Cybersecurity in Education
Join us for a roundtable discussion, bringing together industry experts, thought leaders, and cybersecurity professionals to share their insights and experiences.
Duration: 45 minutes
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With the number of cyberattacks rising and the cost per incident soaring, colleges and universities cannot afford to sit back and hope their on-premises applications pass the test.
Instead, they’d do well to migrate to the latest generation of cloud-based document management and workflow solutions, which offer industry-standard protection for content, data, and end users.
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