# A Systematic Review of Cybersecurity Risks in Higher Education
## 9 Analysis and Discussion of Cyber Risks and Countermeasures in HE
### Data Leaks  
Data leaks are often the focus in cybersecurity, and severe incidents have already occurred [1; 5]. We identified several valuable information assets in HE that needs protection, notably both student and employee PII, passwords, financial information, and research data, were all frequently mentioned. Targeted attacks by state-sponsored espionage and cyber-crime aim for such information, Table 13. Espionage can aim to map the organization and obtain a technological advantage. Organized crime will primarily look to sell obtained information for financial gain. The most common attack vector in HE is social engineering in spear-phishing emails and other hacking attacks, exploiting the weak security culture or technical security. The attacker will likely install malware for persistent access once inside the network, Table 11. An example of a persistent hacking attack hit the Australian National University targeting and extracting student and employee PII over multiple years ([[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-04/anu-data-hack-bank-records-personal-information/11176788](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-04/anu-data-hack-bank-records-personal-information/11176788)]([https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-04/anu-data-hack-bank-records-personal-information/11176788](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-04/anu-data-hack-bank-records-personal-information/11176788)) (Visited 1 November 2020)). There are also publicly known industrial espionage attacks targeting universities, such as against the Norwegian University of Science and Technology where the perpetrators extracted information illegally and shared it with another nation ([[https://www.ntnu.no/nyheter/en/two-employees-are-charged-with-contributing-to-data-breaches/](https://www.ntnu.no/nyheter/en/two-employees-are-charged-with-contributing-to-data-breaches/)]([https://www.ntnu.no/nyheter/en/two-employees-are-charged-with-contributing-to-data-breaches/](https://www.ntnu.no/nyheter/en/two-employees-are-charged-with-contributing-to-data-breaches/)) (Visited 1 November 2020)). The constant influx of new students, external guest and employees does also present the potential risk of opportunist and unfaithful servants in the HE environment. Foreign intelligence services have also been known to target vulnerable employees from their home country in the academic environment [70].  
Additionally, the results document that data leaks can occur in multiple ways. Untended disclosure can be caused by, for example, human error combined with poorly documented data handling routines and security management, both in the research and administrative processes. Weakly configured systems can leak data publicly. Hacktivists are a threat for universities working with politically controversial material, which can gather sensitive data and release it for political gain.  
_Countermeasures_: Implementing sufficient information security strategies to academic institutions might mitigate data leakage. The doctoral thesis from [PERSON] [71] addresses that University data custodians should implement, promote, and monitor comprehensive information security strategies to protect university PII and minimize the adverse effects of a data breach. These strategies, including training, monitoring and new defensive technologies, while implementing positive social change, include potential leadership awareness and culture.