Cyberattacks are extremely costly for institutions, and they are becoming more frequent.
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“The cyberattack was just another kick in the shin,” for the struggling college, said Gerlach. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Lincoln celebrated its highest-ever student headcount—986 undergraduates enrolled full-time during the 2019-20 academic year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. But the college’s already shaky finances were upended by steep enrollment and fundraising declines during the pandemic.
Henry Stoever, president and CEO of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, says more boards of trustees are now realizing the cyberattacks pose a serious risk to their institutions. But reported cyber incidents represent only a fraction of total attacks, Berglas said. Many institutions are unwilling to disclose that they suffered cyberattacks unless they are required to by law, in part because they could be subject to lawsuits if the attack jeopardized the security of student or employee personal information.
Why so high? Colleges and universities notoriously fail to backup their systems, he said, which adds to the cost of recovery. Because academic departments are often siloed, comprehensive security protocols are difficult for college IT departments to implement. “Each department has its own little fiefdom. They may have their own file servers and their own things, and they don’t want other people interfering with their stuff,” he said.
“There’s a very hefty amount of people in certain places like China that know the government will pay them for [the information],” Wisniewski said. “They don’t know what they’re stealing, they’re just like ‘Hey, this company makes windmills, and we’re competing with the Americans to build windmills, let’s steal their software and maybe there’s something that we can then sell to the government.’”
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