• Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • Log In
  • Sign Up
  • Data Privacy
  • Send a Release
Cision PR Newswire: news distribution, targeting and monitoring home
  • News
  • Products
    • Overview
    • Distribution by PR Newswire
    • Cision Communications Cloud®
    • Cision IR
    • All Products
  • Contact
    • General Inquiries
    • Request a Demo
    • Editorial Bureaus
    • Partnerships
    • Media Inquiries
    • Worldwide Offices

 

When typing in this field, a list of search results will appear and be automatically updated as you type.

Searching for your content...

No results found. Please change your search terms and try again.
  • News in Focus
      • Browse News Releases

      • All News Releases
      • All Public Company
      • English-only
      • News Releases Overview

      • Multimedia Gallery

      • All Multimedia
      • All Photos
      • All Videos
      • Multimedia Gallery Overview

      • Trending Topics

      • All Trending Topics
  • Business & Money
      • Auto & Transportation

      • All Automotive & Transportation
      • Aerospace, Defense
      • Air Freight
      • Airlines & Aviation
      • Automotive
      • Maritime & Shipbuilding
      • Railroads and Intermodal Transportation
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Transportation, Trucking & Railroad
      • Travel
      • Trucking and Road Transportation
      • Auto & Transportation Overview

      • View All Auto & Transportation

      • Business Technology

      • All Business Technology
      • Blockchain
      • Broadcast Tech
      • Computer & Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Components
      • Electronic Design Automation
      • Financial Technology
      • High Tech Security
      • Internet Technology
      • Nanotechnology
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Semiconductors
      • Business Technology Overview

      • View All Business Technology

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • All Entertain­ment & Media
      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • Entertain­ment & Media Overview

      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Financial Services & Investing

      • All Financial Services & Investing
      • Accounting News & Issues
      • Acquisitions, Mergers and Takeovers
      • Banking & Financial Services
      • Bankruptcy
      • Bond & Stock Ratings
      • Conference Call Announcements
      • Contracts
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Dividends
      • Earnings
      • Earnings Forecasts & Projections
      • Financing Agreements
      • Insurance
      • Investments Opinions
      • Joint Ventures
      • Mutual Funds
      • Private Placement
      • Real Estate
      • Restructuring & Recapitalization
      • Sales Reports
      • Shareholder Activism
      • Shareholder Meetings
      • Stock Offering
      • Stock Split
      • Venture Capital
      • Financial Services & Investing Overview

      • View All Financial Services & Investing

      • General Business

      • All General Business
      • Awards
      • Commercial Real Estate
      • Corporate Expansion
      • Earnings
      • Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
      • Human Resource & Workforce Management
      • Licensing
      • New Products & Services
      • Obituaries
      • Outsourcing Businesses
      • Overseas Real Estate (non-US)
      • Personnel Announcements
      • Real Estate Transactions
      • Residential Real Estate
      • Small Business Services
      • Socially Responsible Investing
      • Surveys, Polls and Research
      • Trade Show News
      • General Business Overview

      • View All General Business

  • Science & Tech
      • Consumer Technology

      • All Consumer Technology
      • Artificial Intelligence
      • Blockchain
      • Cloud Computing/Internet of Things
      • Computer Electronics
      • Computer Hardware
      • Computer Software
      • Consumer Electronics
      • Cryptocurrency
      • Data Analytics
      • Electronic Commerce
      • Electronic Gaming
      • Financial Technology
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Multimedia & Internet
      • Peripherals
      • Social Media
      • STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Math)
      • Supply Chain/Logistics
      • Wireless Communications
      • Consumer Technology Overview

      • View All Consumer Technology

      • Energy & Natural Resources

      • All Energy
      • Alternative Energies
      • Chemical
      • Electrical Utilities
      • Gas
      • General Manufacturing
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Oil & Energy
      • Oil and Gas Discoveries
      • Utilities
      • Water Utilities
      • Energy & Natural Resources Overview

      • View All Energy & Natural Resources

      • Environ­ment

      • All Environ­ment
      • Conservation & Recycling
      • Environmental Issues
      • Environmental Policy
      • Environmental Products & Services
      • Green Technology
      • Natural Disasters
      • Environ­ment Overview

      • View All Environ­ment

      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
      • Aerospace & Defense
      • Agriculture
      • Chemical
      • Construction & Building
      • General Manufacturing
      • HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning)
      • Machinery
      • Machine Tools, Metalworking and Metallurgy
      • Mining
      • Mining & Metals
      • Paper, Forest Products & Containers
      • Precious Metals
      • Textiles
      • Tobacco
      • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing Overview

      • View All Heavy Industry & Manufacturing

      • Telecomm­unications

      • All Telecomm­unications
      • Carriers and Services
      • Mobile Entertainment
      • Networks
      • Peripherals
      • Telecommunications Equipment
      • Telecommunications Industry
      • VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol)
      • Wireless Communications
      • Telecomm­unications Overview

      • View All Telecomm­unications

  • Lifestyle & Health
      • Consumer Products & Retail

      • All Consumer Products & Retail
      • Animals & Pets
      • Beers, Wines and Spirits
      • Beverages
      • Bridal Services
      • Cannabis
      • Cosmetics and Personal Care
      • Fashion
      • Food & Beverages
      • Furniture and Furnishings
      • Home Improvement
      • Household, Consumer & Cosmetics
      • Household Products
      • Jewelry
      • Non-Alcoholic Beverages
      • Office Products
      • Organic Food
      • Product Recalls
      • Restaurants
      • Retail
      • Supermarkets
      • Toys
      • Consumer Products & Retail Overview

      • View All Consumer Products & Retail

      • Entertain­ment & Media

      • All Entertain­ment & Media
      • Advertising
      • Art
      • Books
      • Entertainment
      • Film and Motion Picture
      • Magazines
      • Music
      • Publishing & Information Services
      • Radio & Podcast
      • Television
      • Entertain­ment & Media Overview

      • View All Entertain­ment & Media

      • Health

      • All Health
      • Biometrics
      • Biotechnology
      • Clinical Trials & Medical Discoveries
      • Dentistry
      • FDA Approval
      • Fitness/Wellness
      • Health Care & Hospitals
      • Health Insurance
      • Infection Control
      • International Medical Approval
      • Medical Equipment
      • Medical Pharmaceuticals
      • Mental Health
      • Pharmaceuticals
      • Supplementary Medicine
      • Health Overview

      • View All Health

      • Sports

      • All Sports
      • General Sports
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Sporting Events
      • Sports Equipment & Accessories
      • Sports Overview

      • View All Sports

      • Travel

      • All Travel
      • Amusement Parks and Tourist Attractions
      • Gambling & Casinos
      • Hotels and Resorts
      • Leisure & Tourism
      • Outdoors, Camping & Hiking
      • Passenger Aviation
      • Travel Industry
      • Travel Overview

      • View All Travel

  • Policy & Public Interest
      • Policy & Public Interest

      • All Policy & Public Interest
      • Advocacy Group Opinion
      • Animal Welfare
      • Congressional & Presidential Campaigns
      • Corporate Social Responsibility
      • Domestic Policy
      • Economic News, Trends, Analysis
      • Education
      • Environmental
      • European Government
      • FDA Approval
      • Federal and State Legislation
      • Federal Executive Branch & Agency
      • Foreign Policy & International Affairs
      • Homeland Security
      • Labor & Union
      • Legal Issues
      • Natural Disasters
      • Not For Profit
      • Patent Law
      • Public Safety
      • Trade Policy
      • U.S. State Policy
      • Policy & Public Interest Overview

      • View All Policy & Public Interest

  • People & Culture
      • People & Culture

      • All People & Culture
      • Aboriginal, First Nations & Native American
      • African American
      • Asian American
      • Children
      • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
      • Hispanic
      • Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual
      • Men's Interest
      • People with Disabilities
      • Religion
      • Senior Citizens
      • Veterans
      • Women
      • People & Culture Overview

      • View All People & Culture

      • In-Language News

      • español
      • português
      • Česko
      • Danmark
      • Deutschland
      • España
      • France
      • Italia
      • Nederland
      • Norge
      • Polska
      • Portugal
      • Россия
      • Slovensko
      • Suomi
      • Sverige
  • Overview
  • Distribution by PR Newswire
  • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • Cision IR
  • All Products
  • General Inquiries
  • Request a Demo
  • Editorial Bureaus
  • Partnerships
  • Media Inquiries
  • Worldwide Offices
  • PR Newswire: news distribution, targeting and monitoring
  • Send a Release
    • ALL CONTACT INFO
    • Contact Us

      888-776-0942
      from 8 AM - 10 PM ET

  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Log In
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • News in Focus
    • Browse All News
    • Multimedia Gallery
    • Trending Topics
  • Business & Money
    • Auto & Transportation
    • Business Technology
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Financial Services & Investing
    • General Business
  • Science & Tech
    • Consumer Technology
    • Energy & Natural Resources
    • Environ­ment
    • Heavy Industry & Manufacturing
    • Telecomm­unications
  • Lifestyle & Health
    • Consumer Products & Retail
    • Entertain­ment & Media
    • Health
    • Sports
    • Travel
  • Policy & Public Interest
  • People & Culture
    • People & Culture
  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Log In
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • Overview
  • Distribution by PR Newswire
  • Cision Communications Cloud®
  • Cision IR
  • All Products
  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Log In
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • RSS
  • GDPR
  • General Inquiries
  • Request a Demo
  • Editorial Bureaus
  • Partnerships
  • Media Inquiries
  • Worldwide Offices
  • Send a Release
  • Sign Up
  • Log In
  • Resources
  • Blog
  • Journalists
  • RSS
  • GDPR

BlueVoyant Report Reveals Ransomware is the Number One Cyber Threat facing Higher Education


News provided by

BlueVoyant

Feb 23, 2021, 12:50 ET

Share this article

Share this article


COVID-19 has forced the higher education sector to rapidly transition to remote learning. This report delivers insights into the growing threat landscape of ransomware, credential breaches and other online threats facing universities and colleges.

NEW YORK, Feb. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BlueVoyant, a cybersecurity services company, today announced the findings from its Cybersecurity in Higher Education report. Using open source data and proprietary research, BlueVoyant analyzed 2702 universities across 43 countries, revealing that ransomware attacks against universities increased by 100% between 2019 and 2020, and are the number one cyber threat—with the average cost of a ransomware attack totaling $447,000. Additionally, tactics seen in other industries—such as holding organizations to ransom for larger sums of money—were also observed amongst attacks on higher education institutions. 

In the wake of COVID-19, the higher education sector is experiencing unprecedented change. Not only are universities embracing, or wrestling with, a host of new technologies and teaching methods—they're also using a variety of apps, portals, and remote teaching technologies to support online or blended learning environments, which exponentially increase their vulnerability to a cybersecurity breach. As the nature of the classroom and the student experience evolves, universities face new challenges, new demands, and new risks which underscore the critical need to secure their proprietary data sources and to be properly positioned to withstand the growing threat landscape of cybersecurity breaches.

The report outlines the current threat landscape for the higher education sector and, delivers insights about the growing threat of ransomware attacks, the outsized impact of credential breaches, and the broader consequences for schools in the form of credential stuffing attacks. The research also outlines a concerning prevalence of high-risk vulnerabilities in the sector, which require remediation, including using multi-factor authentication, password policy mandates, monitoring anomalies and password screening.  

Key findings from the report include:

  • Ransomware is the number one threat facing universities—ransomware events doubled from 2019 to 2020.
  • The average cost of a ransomware attack in higher education in 2020 was $447,000.
  • Data breaches were the number two threat facing universities, making up half of all events in 2019.
  • Data theft by nation states is a regular occurrence, affecting over 200 universities in the past two years.
  • University credential lists are massive and heavily trafficked in dark web markets, underpinning a huge volume of threats targeting accounts and vulnerable websites.
  • Passwords are easily compromised due to the prevalence of simple passwords and password reuse.
  • Threats have magnified, due to increasing reliance on mobile devices, the move to remote learning, and third-party education partners—expanding the higher education attack surface.

Common vulnerabilities identified in the sector are:

  • Two thirds (66%) of all analyzed universities and colleges lacked all basic email security configurations, which left these institutions exposed to phishing attacks.
  • Over three quarters of all analyzed universities and colleges had open or unsecured remote desktop ports. Open remote desktop protocol (RDP) ports are the number two threat vector—behind phishing—or ransomware gangs.
  • 86% of all observed universities and colleges showed evidence of inbound botnet targeting. The rise of botnet activity over the past year has prominently featured in the news.

Key adversary tactics commonly deployed against education sector targets included:

Credential stuffing: whereby account credentials, typically consisting of lists of usernames and/or email addresses and the corresponding passwords, are used to gain unauthorized access to user accounts through large-scale automated login attempts.

Brute-Forcing: when an attacker systematically submits many passwords or passphrases with the hope of eventually guessing correctly. The attacker checks all possible passwords and passphrases until the correct one is found.

Dehashing/Cracking: the process of recovering passwords from data that has been stored in an unsalted hashed form. Hashes are scrambled versions of passwords that services use to enhance security practices, however, hashing is not equivalent to cryptography and many hashes can be 'cracked' or guessed.

Commenting on the research, Jim Penrose, COO, BlueVoyant said: "As the nature of teaching and the student experience changes in response to COVID-19, universities and higher education establishments face new challenges, demands and risks. The attack surface has exponentially increased as organizations in this sector move to remote learning and face unique privacy and cyber risks. This is due to the combination of the sensitive data they manage and the nature of how technology is deployed, combined with growing regulations facing this sector."

"The good news is that many of these issues can be easily rectified with the introduction of cybersecurity technologies, policies and user education. This includes multi-factor authentication (MFA) and long password policies, combined with the ability to block password reuse and simple passwords, and password screening. By combining long passwords with MFA and screening, the chance of being breached through brute force or credential stuffing attacks is considerably reduced."

In addition to the broad scope analysis, BlueVoyant has also provided insights on a smaller pool of 30 universities. This in-depth analysis looked for distinct patterns and trends to identify vulnerabilities that matched the known threat vectors and risks. Analysis showed that torrenting (a popular method of sharing large files online) and gaming were being widely used, and highlighted the scale of credentials data commonly available.

Jim Rosenthal, co-founder and CEO, BlueVoyant, concludes: "This is an industry that has had to rapidly pivot to online learning, changing their standard methods of learning, practically overnight. The education sector is also under huge financial and regulatory pressure. Threat actors know that there are vulnerabilities to be exploited and they are taking advantage of these vulnerabilities at every opportunity—making it an imperative for universities to adopt a solid cybersecurity threat posture to ensure that the wealth of sensitive data is properly defended against adversaries."

About BlueVoyant

BlueVoyant is an expert-driven cybersecurity services company whose mission is to proactively defend organizations of all sizes against today's constant, sophisticated attackers, and advanced threats. 

Led by CEO, Jim Rosenthal, BlueVoyant's highly skilled team includes former government cyber officials with extensive frontline experience in responding to advanced cyber threats on behalf of the National Security Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Unit 8200 and GCHQ, together with private sector experts. BlueVoyant services utilize large real-time datasets with industry leading analytics and technologies.

Founded in 2017 by Fortune 500 executives, including Executive Chairman, Tom Glocer, and former Government cyber officials, BlueVoyant is headquartered in New York City and has offices in Maryland, Tel Aviv, San Francisco, Manila, Toronto, London, and Latin America.

BlueVoyant Press Contacts: 
Danielle Ostrovsky  
C8 Consulting (Americas)  
T: 001 410-302-9459  
E: [email protected] 

Jim Pople 
C8 Consulting (EMEA)  
T: +44 7955 030191  
E: [email protected]

SOURCE BlueVoyant

Modal title

Also from this source

BlueVoyant es un socio de diseño para la nueva cartera de...


BlueVoyant is a Design Partner for Microsoft's New Portfolio of...

Explore

More news releases in similar topics

  • Computer & Electronics
  • High Tech Security
  • Computer Software
  • Back-to-School
  • Education

Contact Cision

  • Cision Distribution 888-776-0942
    from 8 AM - 9 PM ET

  • Chat with an Expert
  • General Inquiries
  • Request a Demo
  • Editorial Bureaus
  • Partnerships
  • Media Inquiries
  • Worldwide Offices

Products

  • Cision Communication Cloud®
  • For Marketers
  • For Public Relations
  • For IR & Compliance
  • For Agency
  • For Small Business
  • All Products

About

  • About PR Newswire
  • About Cision
  • Become a Publishing Partner
  • Become a Channel Partner
  • Careers
  • COVID-19 Resources
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Asia
  • Brazil
  • Canada
  • Czech
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • India
  • Israel
  • Italy
  • Mexico
  • Middle East
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Russia
  • Slovakia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom

My Services

  • All New Releases
  • Online Member Center
  • ProfNet

Contact Cision

Products

About

My Services
  • All News Releases
  • Online Member Center
  • ProfNet
Cision Distribution Helpline
888-776-0942
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Information Security Policy
  • Site Map
  • RSS
  • Cookie Settings
Copyright © 2022 Cision US Inc.