October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and institutes of higher education are facing a rise in digital threats. This package aired in the Oct. 9 newscast. Anchored by Ben Huber.Claire Macchiarola
October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a timely reminder as universities nationwide face a surge in digital threats.According to Check Point Research, education has officially become the most targeted sector by cyberterrorists worldwide, averaging nearly 4,700 attacks every week globally.
At UCF, campus community members may remember an email that hit faculty and student inboxes last May. It carried a message: Canvas was completely unavailable due to a cybersecurity incident. And UCF was far from alone.That disruption was part of a massive global breach impacting nearly 9,000 schools, as documented in an official security alert by the U.S. Department of Education Federal Student Aid Knowledge Center.With over 40% of North American colleges relying on Canvas, hackers were able to use one centralized external vendor as a backdoor to millions of files and critical campus networks, as reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.According to UCF’s Chief Information Security Officer Holly Drake, the reason why higher education is a prime target lies within the nature of academia itself.”Higher ed is more open as an organization and as a culture than, say, a financial institution like a bank,” Drake said. “So, if you think about your time in higher ed, it’s really about collaboration, sharing creatively, being open.”When campuses prioritize collaboration over restriction, they can inadvertently create what is recognized in cybersecurity as a “single point of failure” — a design or configuration flaw where a single vulnerability can disrupt an entire ecosystem.
An email was sent to all university staff and students on May 7. Hackers from the cybercriminal group ShinyHunters threatened to release personal information from an estimated 9,000 other universities, as well as UCF, that used Canvas.
Claire Macchiarola
Drake said tens of thousands of individuals log onto the shared network daily using personal devices, creating endless potential entry points for threat actors looking to weaponize society’s growing digital dependence.”Attackers like to target institutions that have the heart and mind of a community,” Drake said. “If you think about a college as prominent as UCF, it is the heart and mind of our community.”Compounding the issue is a rapidly evolving technological landscape. Cybersecurity graduate student Eram Mahbub said AI has completely changed the game.”A good way people would be able to differentiate it before was there would be grammatical errors or spelling errors in these phishing emails,” Mahbub said. “Which, with AI, it’s harder to tell what’s a phishing email and what’s not.”While UCF Information Security actively fights back with simulated phishing drills and advanced security tracking tools, experts emphasized the ultimate line of defense relies on individual awareness.”You kind of have to be aware of that stuff yourself too, if you don’t want your information to be leaked,” Mahbub said.Drake echoed this, urging the community to trust their instincts when navigating their inboxes.”If you see something, say something,” Drake said. “Just if you feel that tingle of ‘this might not be real,’ to pause and take action is really important to protect actually the whole.”If you suspect an account is compromised, the UCF Security Incident Response Team is available 24/7 to investigate.
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