Cybersecurity Awareness Toolkit

CampusGuard, a partner of Nelnet Campus Commerce, focuses on cybersecurity and compliance needs of campus-based organization in higher education. Offering a broad array of offensive security services, throughout their 12 years in business, they understand what it takes to keep higher education information secure.

Our partners at CampusGuard have created a Cybersecurity Awareness Toolkit to assist higher education institutions in becoming more knowledgeable when it comes to information security at their institutions. This toolkit covers all topics from higher ed statistics, best practices, cyberattack methods, and information on preventing phishing.

Adhering to best practices can significantly reduce the risk of your institution becoming a victim of a security breach. Updating operating systems and installing anti-virus software is a great start, as in requiring strong passwords of at least eight characters with a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. Other practices to consider:

• Secure devices when not in use and use encryption
• Only connect to trusted, private networks; not public wi-fi

Many institutions lack strong cybersecurity practices, making them vulnerable to data breaches. To combat cyberattacks, institutions need to include cybersecurity awareness, prevention, and data security into their training and culture. Hackers use a variety of methods to gain access to an organization’s network. These methods can include:

• Malware, which is a malicious code or software inserted into a system to compromises it
• DDoS Attack, which is an attack that occurs when an attacker floods a server with internet traffic to prevent users from accessing online services and sites

Phishing attacks are the most common cyber threat to higher education institutions and other organizations. These specially crafted, seemingly legitimate-looking emails are used to trick employees into providing confidential data, including passwords and credit card numbers. Consequences of a phishing attack can include malware infections, compromised accounts, and loss of data and money. When it comes to phishing emails:

• 30 percent of phishing emails are opened
• It costs $4.65 million for an average organization to recover

View the Cybersecurity Awareness Toolkit in its entirety, so your institution can improve cybersecurity on your campus.

Download the cybersecurity awareness toolkit document Now

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