According to the United Kingdom government’s 2022 Cyber Security Breaches Survey, of the educational institutions surveyed, higher education employees were the most likely to identify breaches or attacks, with 92% reporting an incident within the last 12 months. The consequences have been extreme. A ransomware attack impacting the University of York in 2021 resulted in sensitive data being encrypted and held captive by hackers for weeks without resolution. At other universities, sophisticated attacks such as phishing emails and distributed denial of service (DDoS) have run havoc – intercepting confidential logins, tampering with student data and forcing downtime during valuable learning hours.
