October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. On a college or
university campus it is also the month when posters go up and the real work
still sits in the ticket queue. Myths are comfortable. They let leadership say
we are covered while SIS, LMS, identity, and research systems stay exposed in
ways an audit or an attacker will eventually find.
NewPush works with 75+ institutions supporting 1M+ students
and 100k faculty. The pattern repeats: the campuses that stay calm in
enrollment season are the ones that retired these myths before an incident
forced the conversation.
Here are six that still show up in Higher Ed IT rooms.
Myth 1: Students are the main cybersecurity risk
Students click. So do faculty, staff, contractors, and
visiting researchers. Shared credentials, lingering admin roles, and vendor
accounts often create more damage than a student phishing miss. Treat the whole
population as part of the attack surface, not just the people under 25.
Myth 2: MFA means phishing is solved
MFA raises the bar. It does not end social engineering, MFA
fatigue, session theft, or help-desk impersonation. If your tabletop still ends
at "we have MFA," rewrite it. Include identity takeover during
registration week and a fake IT call to a department admin.
Myth 3: FERPA compliance equals NIST 800-171 readiness
FERPA is necessary. It is not the same as controlled
unclassified information controls, evidence packs, and continuous monitoring
language many campuses now face. If your board packet only says FERPA, ask what
NIST 800-171 work still has no owner.
Myth 4: A green backup job means we can restore SIS or LMS
A successful backup job is not a restore test. Test the
systems students and faculty would notice on a Monday morning. Name the restore
target. Write who decides and who speaks. Hope is not a recovery time
objective.
Myth 5: Cybersecurity is an IT-only problem
IT owns tooling and architecture. The institution owns
behavior, funding, and the freeze list when everything is a priority. Put
identity owners, SIS/LMS owners, and communications in the same room as the
CISO. Enrollment season will not wait for a pure IT fix.
Myth 6: Exposure Management can wait until after the semester settles
Exposure does not respect the academic calendar. Findings
that age past 30 days become next semester's incident. If you have a CTEM or
Exposure Management view, bring the top ten to leadership with owners, not a
raw SIEM tour.
What to do this month
Pick two myths your campus still lives by. Assign owners.
Put a restore test and an identity cleanup on the calendar before Halloween
marketing distracts everyone. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is useful only if
it changes operating habits.
How myths survive enrollment season
Myths last because they reduce meeting time. Saying students
are the problem lets departments skip identity cleanup. Saying MFA is enough
lets phishing tabletops stay shallow. Saying backup is green lets restore tests
slip past registration week.
The cost shows up later: a help-desk impersonation during
add/drop, a contractor account still live in the identity directory, an
Exposure Management finding that aged into an incident while the team chased a
new console. Cybersecurity Awareness Month is the clean window to name which
myth your campus still funds with silence.
Put two myths on the CIO agenda. Require a written owner and
a date. If the room cannot pick owners, you do not have a disagreement about
technology. You have a priority problem.
Where NewPush fits
Retiring myths tells you what the institution still
believes. When you are ready to measure AI preparedness alongside those
exposure gaps, Phase 0 of Project NoéMI is optional and short: an AI readiness
assessment, a Trainer login (the fluency seat for governed AI practice), and a
clear next step.
