Page 13 - Campus Technology, March/April 2020

CYBERSECURITY
When Your IT Team Can’t
Keep Up with Cybersecurity
Most universities struggle to find sufficient resources for cybersecurity. SOC-as-a- Service provides a smart alternative as one part of the story for better protection.
When phishing goes wrong, it can happen in an instant. A recipient glances at his inbox, notices a subject line he
or she cares about, opens the message and clicks the link to a document to give a quick response. Bam! The account is compromised. Untended, the cyber intruder quietly and automatically goes about its business, loading a trojan to capture private information or immediately locking up the system and demanding a ransom.
That scenario takes place every day in higher education.
No matter how well you train your users not to auto-click on emails, they’re still going to do it. “We have driver’s training and
accidents still happen,” pointed out Jason Miller, founder and CEO of cybersecurity service provider BitLyft. “Training is great. You need to do that. But you can educate people until you’re blue in the face, and they will still make mistakes. You’d never be able to educate everyone to the point where they’d do no wrong, and even if you could, you’d never be able to keep up with the pace at which the threats are evolving.”
Is it any wonder that Educause has named the need for an “information security strategy” as a top IT issue for five years running? Besides, as Educause noted, “No one can be mindful all the time.”