Centralized Cybersecurity Strengthens Higher Education Institutions

Historically, cybersecurity in higher education has been highly decentralized, with individual departments maintaining their own IT and security tools. But this fragmented approach impedes visibility and monitoring, which is essential for effective security.

Today, many institutions are adopting centralized security and taking advantage of its numerous benefits, including greater efficiency, streamlined employee onboarding, improved asset management and better cost control. Standardization, particularly in identity management, makes it easier to secure and monitor the entire environment while enhancing the user experience. Done well, centralized security and associated best practices raise the level of IT across the institution.

The shift to centralization raises questions for IT teams: How should they standardize their tools and processes? Will employees need training on security solutions? Are networks segmented appropriately? How can artificial intelligence support stronger security? To address some of these questions, many institutions are adopting integrated platforms that offer better anomaly detection, faster response times and other advanced capabilities. Platforms also ease the burden on IT staffers who would otherwise have to learn many different tools.

The bigger hurdle is often cultural. When longtime users are comfortable with the tools they have, they may resist learning something new. In addition, “change fatigue” is prevalent in higher education. One way to ease the transition is through messaging that resonates emotionally. For example, many users are more motivated to protect their personal information — including academic, medical and financial records — than institutional data. Tapping into these concerns may be more effective than focusing on compliance requirements.

Many universities have extremely complex regulatory environments. Campuses may include hospitals, banks and airports, as well as nuclear reactors serving research purposes — the list goes on. If there is a cybersecurity regulation, higher education institutions are likely to be exposed to it.

The challenge is that many of these regulations conflict with and even contradict one another. Traditionally, campus security teams have addressed this by segmenting networks into various types of regulatory environments. Ideally, regulators and policymakers would simplify compliance considerations, but in the meantime, institutions must rely on tools, such as those from Cisco Meraki, that enable network segmentation within a centralized environment.

Another challenge is the mismatch between regulatory concerns, such as data privacy, and operational concerns, such as ransomware. From a regulatory perspective, data privacy and data theft are the priorities. The consequences of a data breach can include fines, reputational damage and the loss of years’ worth of research data. From an institutional perspective, however, the primary concern is exposure to ransomware that could potentially shut down the campus. Security teams that are centralizing security must be aware of these disparate priorities and strike the proper balance among them.

A final recommendation for institutions rethinking their approach to security is to ensure there is accountability among institutional leadership. While security teams are responsible for ensuring security processes are effective, leaders must be aware of how budgeting, staffing and other decisions can affect risk management. Tabletop exercises and similar practices are an excellent way for executives to understand the implications of their decisions from a risk management perspective.

Centralizing cybersecurity offers higher education institutions an effective way to reduce risk, increase efficiency and adapt to evolving threats. However, success depends as much on human factors as technical ones. By aligning tools, messaging and leadership with a shared security vision, campuses can overcome these obstacles and build more resilient and secure environments.