When Prevention Fails: Building Cyber Resilience for Higher Education
Cyberattacks increasingly target the trusted systems used to manage identities, devices, and cloud services. When those systems are compromised, the disruption can quickly impact teaching, research, and campus operations. Using a fictional higher education scenario inspired by real-world attack techniques, this interactive session explores what institutional resilience looks like after preventive controls fail. Rather than focus solely on stopping attacks, the discussion examines how colleges and universities can prepare to recover critical services, restore identities and Microsoft 365 environments, recover endpoints at scale, and maintain operational continuity during a destructive cyber event. Higher education and industry leaders will share practical approaches to cyber resilience, recovery planning, and architectural decisions that can reduce downtime while supporting institutional priorities. Participants will be invited to discuss their own challenges and compare recovery strategies with peers. Attendees will leave with practical guidance to assess risks to trusted administrative systems; develop recovery strategies for identities, Microsoft 365, endpoints, and critical services; apply cyber resilience principles, including immutable recovery, to continuity planning; and reduce operational disruption through resilient recovery architecture.
Presenters
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Dean Dang
Director, Enterprise Applications and Services,
University of Illinois Chicago
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Derek Glascoe
Sr. Manager, Sales Engineering,
Commvault
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Nate Niezgorski
Commvault Cloud Specialist,
Commvault