Cyber-security is an afterthought in MIT's offices

Sep 11, 2015 01:23 GMT  ·  By

A research by SecurityScorecard, a company specialized in security benchmarks and assessments, ranked 485 large colleges and universities based on cyber-security protocols.

The company used over 30 million security-risk signals and sensors from their own technology to evaluate universities based on a series of criteria that included: Web application security, network security, endpoint security, hacker chatter, social engineering, DNS health, IP reputation, patching cadence, password exposure, and Cubit score.

For each category a grade was assigned, and each university got a final score in the classic American style of A to F.

According to SecurityScorecard's report, the Top 10 most secure colleges and universities in the US are as follow: Merced Community College, Concordia College, Adams State University, Centre College, Henry Ford Community College, University of North Alabama, Golden Gate University, University of Idaho, Gannon University, and Pepperdine University.

MIT gets a D in cyber-security, almost got an F

No big names on the good list, but a lot more famous universities on the bottom of SecurityScorecard's ranking: MIT (as the worst ranked), New Mexico State University, Cambridge University, Temple University, University of Virginia, University of Southern California, Boston University, University of California Riverside, Louisiana State University (LSU), and the University of Georgia.

The report did not include the University of Virginia's data breach; otherwise, it would have ranked above MIT, being the only university on the list that would have gotten an F as the final score.

Most of these bottom ranked schools scored an F when it came to password exposure, patching cadence, IP reputation, and network security.

It does not surprise us that more famous universities are ranked very low on this list because they also have a bigger vertical when it comes to bureaucracy.

This makes it hard to fix security vulnerabilities in time, which in the educational sector usually takes around 28 days on average.

SecurityScorecard university rankings (3 Images)

MIT scores worst in cybersecurity
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