Steven Granat
Director Cyber Security,
Dell Technologies
Turning Threat Intel to Action: Strengthening Cyber Defense in Higher Education
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 | 9:00AM–9:45AM PT | California Ballroom A, Second Floor
Session Type:
Breakout Session
Delivery Format:
Industry Insights Session
From opportunistic attacks to targeted data theft aimed at research, IP, and student records, higher education remains a prime target for sophisticated threat actors. Open research culture, complex distributed environments, and constrained resources create a unique risk profile that CISOs must manage and communicate.
In this session, a panel of cyber threat intelligence experts will share lessons learned from real-world activity against higher education and discuss how to translate those insights into prioritized, actionable defenses for your institution. We will focus on:
- Current threat trends and attack patterns impacting peer institutions, including campaigns against research, identity infrastructure, and cloud workloads
- Key threat actors targeting higher education and how their tactics, techniques, and procedures are evolving
- Why colleges and universities are attractive targets, from valuable datasets to complex, distributed environments and constrained security resources
- Actionable steps to strengthen cyber defense, including how to operationalize threat intelligence, prioritize controls, and improve detection and response
You will leave with concrete takeaways for strengthening campus cyber defense, focusing limited resources on the most relevant threats, improving detection and response, and briefing institutional leadership on evolving cyber risk to research and core academic missions.
