45% of Top American Research Universities Expose Computing Infrastructure to the Open Internet
Brief
By Adrian Cheek, Senior Cybercrime Researcher
The standard story about higher education cybersecurity is that it’s target-rich and cyber-poor: a sprawling, underfunded sector where the weakest links are the community colleges and cash-strapped campuses without the budget for a real security program. This study finds the opposite pattern.
45% of the nation’s most research-intensive universities, doctoral institutions with very high research activity, as classified by Carnegie, expose at least one research computing service to the open internet. That’s 65 of 146 institutions, measured against the national register, not a sample estimate.
Meanwhile, the community colleges and government and municipal bodies sharing the same research and education networks show zero exposure across 158 organizations. Not lower exposure. None.
The gradient isn’t a security story.