Higher education is under siege, and fragmented security is making it harder to respond

Higher education faces a difficult security equation. Universities hold large volumes of sensitive student, financial, health, and research data while supporting open networks, distributed users, legacy infrastructure, and increasingly complex cloud environments. Attackers have taken notice, and the pressure on security teams continues to grow.In Q2 2025, universities faced an average of 4,388 cyberattacks per organization per week, up 24% from the same period in 2024. Nine in ten universities reported experiencing a breach or security incident during the previous 12 months, while the average cost of a data breach in education reached $10.22 million. Confirmed attacks against higher education institutions exposed more than 3.9 million records in 2025, with ransomware continuing to disrupt teaching, research, financial aid, and administrative operations.Those figures are concerning on their own, but they only explain part of the problem. For university systems with multiple campuses, the way security is organized can create an additional layer of risk.Why is higher education so difficult to secure?Universities operate differently from most commercial organizations. Open access, col…

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