As your faculty and staff are traveling for academic conferences or crawling through holiday traffic, a different group is getting ready to strike.
They have been preparing for this exact moment.
They know which universities are running lean, which departmental inboxes will sit untouched, and which security warnings will go unnoticed.
They also know that in many higher education institutions, the campus IT helpdesk is focused on resetting student passwords, not actively hunting for advanced persistent threats (APTs) at midnight. And they understand that from Friday afternoon to Tuesday morning—or during extended winter and summer breaks—your defenses may be quiet for days or weeks at a time.
They're looking forward to campus closures too — just for very different reasons.
According to Semperis's 2025 Ransomware Holiday Risk Report, 52% of organizations hit by ransomware were attacked on a holiday or weekend. That isn't random. It is deliberate, strategic timing.
The real issue isn't whether someone is targeting institutions like yours during a holiday weekend. The real issue is: who is keeping watch when it happens?
The 48-Hour Gap
The risk doesn't begin when the long weekend starts. It begins when people start mentally logging off.
For many academic departments, that starts days before the official campus closure.
By Thursday afternoon, small shortcuts creep in. A department chair shares a password because campus IT isn't around to grant access properly. A visiting lecturer receives temporary credentials that never get securely recorded. A research assistant wraps up a project, but their network permissions stay active because the authorizing manager is already away.
By Friday, the cracks widen. Sessions remain open. Devices aren't locked. The simple routines that quietly protect your institution during the week begin to disappear as everyone rushes out the door.
None of it feels dangerous in the moment. It feels routine. But those routine choices don't get revisited until Tuesday morning. By then, attackers may have had hours to navigate your network completely unnoticed.
The campus network stayed open. The people went offline.
Who is defending the perimeter?
Here is the disconnect most university administrators miss until it is too late.
On one side is a sophisticated criminal syndicate that has already done the research. They know your software, have probed your Student Information System (SIS) and LMS portals, and are waiting for the quietest possible moment to move. This is their full-time job. Semperis found that 78% of organizations cut security staffing by at least half during weekends and holidays. Attackers count on that exact vulnerability.
On the other side, who is actually watching?
For many colleges and universities, the honest answer is: no one. Or maybe just one dependable IT administrator you call when something actively breaks.
But that person isn't monitoring your network at 2 a.m. on a Saturday. They are not catching an anomalous login from an unusual location or reviewing suspicious traffic while you are away. They are waiting for you to report a problem. And you cannot report what you haven't seen yet.
That is the gap: a reactive setup facing a highly proactive threat. It is not a fair fight.
What a resilient defense looks like
A specialized cybersecurity partner like NewPush does far more than respond after the damage is done.
In a resilient architecture, monitoring never stops — whether it's a Thursday afternoon or a month-long summer recess. Security systems spot unusual activity early: a login from a new location, an unexpected mass file transfer, or an access attempt on a faculty account that should be inactive. Those alerts instantly reach a 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) trained to neutralize threats, not a campus voicemail box that won't be checked until Tuesday.
It also means getting ahead of the weekend. Reviewing access. Verifying credentials. Confirming who can reach what systems and enforcing Zero Trust protocols before the campus empties out.
Not because you expect trouble — but because if trouble does show up, you want to catch it before everyone leaves, not after they return to a ransomware lockdown.
Security isn't proven when systems fail. It's proven when no one is watching.
You may already have this covered. If a dedicated SOC is monitoring your campus environment around the clock, you are ahead of many institutions your size.
But if your current plan is to wait for something to break and then submit an IT ticket, it is time to rethink your architecture before the next long weekend arrives.
Click here or give us a call at 1-303-423-4500 to schedule your free 15-Minute Discovery Call and learn how NewPush guarantees continuous audit compliance and Zero Trust security for your campus.
And if you know a higher education administrator heading into the holiday with nothing standing between their institution and a professional attack team except luck, share this with them.
Attackers don't wait for weaknesses. They wait for silence.
