Talk about the potential for trouble. Thousands of kids roam college campuses with phones in hand using social media every day.

Abigail Wang of PG Mag reports.

College Campuses Get An “F” In Cybersecurity

Ah, it’s that time of year again on college campuses. Freshmen hurry to find their way around and seniors bask in their last year of glory. Colleges not only offer a wealth of knowledge, but also house a treasure trove of highly sensitive information. Combined with an open network and a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) culture, cyberattackers consider colleges a prime target.

This obviously isn’t very welcoming news for campuses and their inhabitants. In order to assess the cyber security performance of American higher education institutions, BitSight Technologies conducted a study on the most recognized collegiate athletic conferences: the SEC, ACC, Pac-12, Big 10, Big 12, and Ivy League. These schools represent a student popular of over 2.25 million and network footprint of more than 11 million IP addresses.

Major Findings & Their Problems

BitSight Technology used external data that involved identifying the type of malware infections that struck the schools to rate the groups of universities’ performances on a scale from 250 to 900. The Big 12 had the best security rating with 661 while ACC performed the worst at 588. Overall, however, colleges and universities seem to fail to adequately address security challenges. BitSight notes that the security rating of the education sector as a whole is alarmingly lower than retail and healthcare, two industries that have suffered recent serious data breaches.

The schools that did demonstrate a higher performance rating have a dedicated CISO or Director of Information Security on staff, which is crucial for better security on campus. As the school year progresses from September through May, security performance dips drastically due to the increase of students and devices on campus. These institutions also experience high levels of malware infections, including the Flashback malware that targets Macs, as well as adware and Conficker.