Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, higher education has frantically implemented new technologies to better engage students and create seamless access. However, during this tech build up, many security holes have been opened putting institution data and student privacy at risk.
Speaking at “Higher Education: The Connected Campus”, a virtual event for leaders in higher education organized by Fierce Education in partnership with Fierce Telecom and FierceWireless, Raffi Jamgotchian, President and CTO of Triada Networks, a full-service technology provider, said that “we need to think differently when it comes to cloud resources as opposed to having everything on campus and inside buildings that we can manage and control.”
“The attack surface is quite a bit larger,” Jamgotchian said. “Now you not only have resources in your own building, you have resources in buildings you are never going to visit.”
Pyramid of security: What higher education can implement
Even though this pyramid of security concept comes from the corporate world, this can be adapted and used as a roadmap for cloud security in higher education.
Source: Triada Networks
According to Triada Networks’ Raffi Jamgotchian, what can be implemented in higher education is the following:
- Endpoint Protection
- Identity — including MFA
- Web Filtering
- Continuous Scanning
- Email Filtering
- Security and Awareness Training
- Zero Trust
During his presentation, he also explained how identity is the new endpoint:
Source: Triada Networks
Moving from cyber security to cyber resilience
Also speaking on the session, Grant Asplund, Chief Cyber Security Evangelist and Growth Technologies Advancement at Check Point Software Technologies, a leader in cyber security solutions, said that according to recent Check Point research, there was a 29 percent increase in attacks on educational institutions globally in July, and that is just the first half of the year.
“This is a reminder,” he said, “that the bad guys identify [educational institutions] as an ideal target.”
Source: Check Point Technologies
The future of cloud strategy, according to 92 percent of enterprise respondents, is multi-cloud. A seven percent of respondents said cloud strategy would be shared between a single public cloud and single private cloud.
During his presentation, Grant Asplund said that challenges higher education institutions are facing include both external and internal factors.
External factors include the Covid pandemic, attacks surfaces widening, increased threats, and Digital Transformation. Internal factors include an old and aligning security, the need to protect new technologies, budget constraints, and the lack of resources.
Cloud security platform layers and hierarchy:
Source: Check Point Technologies
“You need to know how to leverage and utilize automation to fully take advantage of the public cloud,” said Asplund.
The foundations of the cloud is, obviously, Network Security. Posture Management follows as key while shifting into workload protection, applications, and API.
As it seems, finding the right solution for higher education means moving to a multi-cloud environment. Asplund recommends that when you move to a multi-cloud you need to get new skills and new tools. You must be able to move at the speed of the cloud, which means you need to move fast. Lastly, seek out partners to help you build unified solutions.
As Asplund said, “the bad guys are getting more efficient and we have to be better.” In other words, hackers never sleep, and we must remain vigilant.
With this great advice from Check Point Technologies’ Grant Asplund, the session concluded. However, university leadership who want to learn more on cloud security, this session, ‘The Connected Campus in the Cloud,’ and the other sessions you can access them on-demand by registering following this link.
For more articles from The Connected Campus, see:
The Connected Campus: Building the Next Generation Network
Connected Campus Combines the Best of Physical and Remote Learning
Pros and Cons for Boosting Bandwidth with Private Wireless Networks