Superior Security Solutions For Your Learning Institution

Absolutely, big and small! We have worked with educational institutions for many years, focusing primarily on cybersecurity while including physical security and access control because it should be considered a complete package.

While the majority of IT firms focused on creating the information highway and vehicles on the road, we focused on securing the highway and cars, which are often unsafe.

Too many IT vendors attempt to bolt on security appliances and applications after the fact or without a complete understanding of how it all comes together and the importance of each piece.

Continuing with the automotive analogy, we design, implement, monitor, and analyze the car's seatbelts, airbags, brakes, and locking mechanisms, and then we install guardrails, traffic lights, and the rules of the road to ensure your safety and security.

No, but your environment is probably more secure than five or ten years ago. Still, every assessment has shown that the assessed environment was not nearly as safe as it should be according to today’s cybersecurity and physical standards.

One reason is that IT and cybersecurity budgets compete for the same funds. In other words, cybersecurity is often downplayed, and IT takes a majority of the allocated budget.

Every EDU environment we have assessed has revealed significant proven cybersecurity gaps. In each case, we have provided guidance that reduced quantifiable cyber risk by as much as 98%, with an average risk reduction between 80% and 89%.

We believe the solution to the budgeting issue is to provide cybersecurity with a unique line item within the budget that would prevent this competing interest.

There are a lot of misleading “professionals” in the cybersecurity field, and this may be the topic at the top of the cyber misinformation pile.

It is an example of how you and your team can tell the difference between a firm that knows what they are speaking about versus those thinking they know – the latter are dangerous.

We offer three primary assessments in this realm, and we want to discuss the differences with you and your team and what is needed. If your vendor deliverable was a report consisting of pages of open Ports and IP addresses, and where the cost was several thousand dollars, they did not perform a “pentest.” – sorry.

We provide your team with detailed, meaningful deliverables resulting from many hours of specialized and experienced analysis specific to your environment – helpful both for administrative and technical teams – no mumbo-jumbo or speaking in technocratic circles.
We want to share an example with you and your team.

Most importantly, your environment changes regularly due to constant organic reconfigurations, and your assessment cadence should be aligned with those changes because you cannot protect what you don’t know.

The ONLY guarantee in cyber is that you will miss critical threats if you are not performing consistent assessments and monitoring.

This is an excellent question that Board members and Administrators should be asking because the risks are increasing and compounding yearly.

As most are aware, insurance companies have been slowly demanding increased cybersecurity technologies and services, and SecuredEDU leadership has been on the leading edge of these conversations and negotiations in support of their clients.

The risk of not performing due diligence within your environment can be measured in dollars and reputation.

A 2021 report revealed that, on average, it costs education institutions $2.73 million to remediate the impact of a ransomware attack, including the cost of downtime, data recovery, device and network repairs, security updates, lost opportunity, and ransom payments. That was 48% higher than the global average across all sectors. We believe this has increased 25% to 40% in 2024, and will continue to increase.

SecuredEDU staff believes that the cost is higher than other sectors because EDU is typically outdated with its infrastructure and technologies, and attacks are occasionally a result of severely obsoleted technologies, with many being end-of-life (EOL).

Our assessments corroborate many of these reported findings, supports our claims of competing budgets, and why cybersecurity should be a unique budget line item.

Additionally, we know that many EDUs severely underreport their cyber breach costs, and some do not report at all, therefore skewing the overall statistics.

Insurance companies have been known to refuse or significantly reduce insurance coverage to their clients for failure to perform their due diligence. Where a cyber attack is successful, an insurer will send in their team to find discrepancies that may justify refusing or reducing payment.

We want to discuss how being your trusted partner before, during, and after these negotiations and incidents can reduce your overal risk, liability, and costs. Please consult with us before you decide to activate your cyber insurance policy.