Universities falling behind in war on cyber crime

Over one third of universities in the UK are a victim of hacking every hour, found recent research that challenged institutions on their ability to deal with the rise of cyber crime.

A poll of leaders in the IT departments of 50 universities concluded that 87% have suffered one or more cyber attacks.

An even more concerning find was the frequency of incidents, with 36% of those who responded confessing that they were forced to face a successful hack once every hour.

The survey, which was carried out by research company Vanson Bourne on the behalf of cloud security development firm VMware, emphasised the consequences of a breach.

Almost 8 out of 10 those surveyed said that reputational damage had been the direct result of cyber attacks, with 74% saying that they were forced to postpone research projects due to infiltration.

There is likely to be more serious consequences at stake in the future, with 83% of IT workers saying that they have observed an increase in both sophistication and frequency when it comes to cyber crime.

However, 64% were not confident that their institution’s current IT infrastructure is strong enough to fend off cyber attacks within the next year to year and a half.

If IT staff are not confident in their institutions when it comes to cyber security, they are right to express concern. The more staff on board who are savvy in the field of cyber crime, the better, as they will be able to make recommendations on improving the infrastructure. They will need to create IT security jobs in order to begin that process.