Building a Cyber-Ready Campus

Protecting student data and intellectual property is more than just a technical challenge. It’s a vital responsibility for every academic institution and those that support them.

Colleges and universities today face a rapidly evolving cyber landscape. Threats such as ransomware, denial of service, and other sophisticated attacks are growing in scale and complexity. This puts academic institutions and communities at greater risk. Institutions must focus on awareness and training throughout campus communities to build a stronger culture of cyber readiness.

With this mission in mind, the National Student Clearinghouse hosted a panel session on November 3^rd, titled “The Cyber Ready Campus: Empowering Higher Ed Staff for Digital Defense.” The session convened leading cybersecurity experts to advance a culture of cyber awareness and digital defense across college campuses. The goal was to help institutions become more resilient, informed, and proactive in their cybersecurity approach. It also provided higher education leaders with practical insights and strategies to foster a culture of cyber readiness.

Sasha Pailet Koff, Managing Director at the Cyber Readiness Institute, started off the panel by explaining what it means to be “cyber ready.” Cybersecurity doesn’t start with technology; it starts with people and culture. Tools are important, but lasting protection comes from cultivating habits that make security instinctive.

Small, consistent actions make the biggest difference: enabling multifactor authentication (MFA), promptly applying software updates, reporting phishing emails, and securing sensitive files. When these actions become routine, they create a culture of vigilance. By embedding security into everyday operations, institutions turn individual awareness into collective resilience.

A significant challenge facing higher education is the disparity in cybersecurity capabilities across institutions. Some institutions have advanced cybersecurity programs, while others operate with minimal resources and aging systems.

The combination of rich data, distributed access, and limited defense capacity makes higher education a prime target. Higher education is, in the words of Michael Klein, the Senior Director for Preparedness and Response at the Institute for Security + Technology (IST), “target-rich and cyber-poor.” This makes it even more important for educational institutions to prioritize cybersecurity risk management.

The most common threats to colleges and universities include ransomware and data breaches. Ransomware attackers often exploit unpatched systems or weak credentials to lock down networks, then demand payment to restore access.

Limited staffing and funding compound the challenge. IT teams juggle academic innovation, student support, and security, often with small budgets and sprawling networks. Recognizing this reality is key to developing pragmatic defenses tailored to institutional capabilities.

Koff described the Cyber Readiness Institute’s “Core Four” areas that institutions should focus on to enhance their cyber readiness:

1. Passwords & MFA: Implement multifactor authentication across all systems and encourage the use of strong, unique passwords. These simple measures can stop most unauthorized access attempts.
2. Software Updates: Keep all operating systems and applications up to date. Patching known vulnerabilities is one of the most cost-effective defenses against attacks.
3. Secure File Sharing: Provide safe, easy-to-use tools for sharing and storing data. Convenience and security must work hand in hand to prevent risky workarounds.
4. Phishing and Social Engineering Prevention: Regularly train faculty, staff, and students to spot and report suspicious messages. Awareness transforms the human element from a weakness into a strength.

Together, these Core Four behaviors lay a foundation for cyber resilience for all institutions, regardless of size and resources, Koff shared.

Not every institution can afford a full security operations center or large dedicated staff. However, every institution can take meaningful steps forward. Kevin Reifsteck, the Director for Cybersecurity Policy at Microsoft, recommended that institutions start by appointing a cybersecurity leader. Even if part-time, this individual can coordinate planning and communication and take accountability for addressing cybersecurity risks.

Organizations can adopt a risk-based approach by focusing resources on the assets and processes most critical to addressing cybersecurity challenges.

Before buying new tools, Reifsteck recommends leveraging built-in security features already included in existing systems. He also emphasized that fostering collaboration across departments is key to success. Cybersecurity isn’t just an IT issue; it’s a campus-wide responsibility. When leadership, IT teams, and faculty work together, even small institutions can achieve strong, sustainable protection.

The panelists shared that preparation is the ultimate defense. No system is impenetrable, so institutions must assume incidents will occur. They should develop an incident response plan that defines clear roles, communication channels, and recovery procedures. Practicing response scenarios builds confidence and ensures that when disruptions occur, recovery is swift, coordinated, and transparent.

The human element remains the most unpredictable factor in cybersecurity, but also the most powerful. Employees who resist new processes often do so because they feel overwhelmed or excluded from decision-making.

“The key is empathy, understanding their challenges, involving them in designing solutions, and framing security in practical, relatable terms,” according to John Ramsey, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer for the National Student Clearinghouse. “Training should be ongoing, accessible, and aligned with real tasks, not abstract theory. Free resources and awareness programs can help build a culture where security is seen as a shared value, not as an obstacle.”

The panelists also discussed artificial intelligence’s (AI) impact on cybersecurity. They offered new ways to detect threats, automate responses, and reduce alert fatigue. AI can analyze massive datasets faster than humans, flag anomalies in real time, and even predict emerging risks.

AI is not a silver bullet, the panelists agreed. It enhances human capability, but it doesn’t replace it. Ethical judgment, contextual understanding, and resilience remain distinctly human strengths.

At the same time, attackers are using AI to craft more convincing phishing messages and exploit vulnerabilities faster. The future of cybersecurity will depend on how well institutions combine AI’s efficiency with human intuition, ethics, and leadership.

The session reinforced that, ultimately, cyber readiness is not a destination. It’s a mindset. For colleges and universities, the journey begins with awareness and grows through collaboration, consistency, and care for the people who make up the institution. Creating a cyber-ready campus relies on cultivating daily security habits, improving collaboration, leveraging existing tools, and prioritizing human awareness alongside technology.

By turning cybersecurity into a habit, preparing for incidents, and embracing both human and AI-driven innovation, higher education can protect not only data and systems but the mission of education itself.

Watch the panel session recording.

Watch our on-demand webinar,
“The Cyber Ready Campus: Empowering Higher Ed Staff for Digital Defense.”