Dive Brief:

• As an industry, education has some of the lowest counts of records exposed per breach incident.

• The willingness of colleges and universities to share security and breach information is helping reduce the number of stolen records, according to the EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research.

• The Higher Education Information Security Council, a group established support communication and coordination for higher education, encourages colleges and universities to embrace this culture of sharing.

Dive Insight:

Colleges and universities continue to get better at dealing with information security threats, though they don’t have a uniform way of addressing such threats. Experts say a culture of openness as well as well-designed incident response plans are some of the ways they are dealing with security threats, perhaps better than other industries.

“Many speculate that higher education’s culture of openness and transparency encourages breach reporting by institutions, even when such reporting is not legally necessary,” said an EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research report. “This culture does not exist in other industry sectors, where breach reporting could damage an organization’s ability to be competitive in that industry.”

Exchanging information allows institutions to develop better security incident management response plans, said the report.