Securing Higher Education – Addressing Five Common Security Challenges

A more connected world has many advantages in terms of information sharing and communication. But by its very nature, being more connected introduces new threats, as organisational boundaries become blurred. At the same time the tools used by attackers have become more sophisticated but also easier to use. The evolution of the threat domain has seen an increase in the number of vectors that need to be considered, along with the ever-present threats that are typically procedural (e.g. patching), or human behaviour related. Here we identify five threat vectors that are common to all higher education organisations and suggest how to mitigate these challenges.