Why Institutions of Higher Education Face Unique Identity Security and Management Risk
Summary: Higher education institutions run hybrid identity environments that combine on-premises Microsoft Active Directory with cloud platforms like Microsoft Entra ID, and the two often operate in parallel with inconsistencies between them - disabling an account in Active Directory may not disable the corresponding Entra ID account. The article attributes the resulting risk to constant identity churn across students, faculty, alumni, researchers, contractors and affiliate labs, plus decentralized departmental IT that enforces different policies across domains and tenants.
Bottom line: Attackers use phishing and MFA fatigue to take over student or staff accounts, then exploit excessive permissions, forgotten group memberships and disconnected identity systems to escalate privileges and move laterally toward intellectual property and sensitive data. Institutions must also produce audit evidence under FERPA, and without centralized identity governance that evidence is time-consuming and error-prone to assemble.
Read the original at The Hacker News ↗
- Topics
- Identity & Access Management
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