(Excepts from Higher Ed News)

• Ransomware attacks are skyrocketing at a time when many colleges are finding they can’t afford cyberinsurance — or can’t even get it.
• For both community colleges and four-year institutions, cyberthreats are now very pronounced, and that reality has led to more institutions facing cyberinsurance premium hikes of as much as 400 percent—or even discovering they are uninsurable.
• An estimated 82 colleges and public school districts have been the victims of cyberattacks so far this year, disrupting learning at more than 1,000 individual institutions and schools across the country, according to the cybersecurity company Emsisoft.
• At least three American community colleges have been attacked by cybercriminals using ransomware since Nov. 30, the latest in a wave of such attacks targeting at least 19 higher education institutions this year. 
• Howard University, in Washington, D.C., was among those institutions and was forced to disconnect its network for several days after an attack in September. Yet even as attacks have buffeted colleges, experts say many remain woefully underprepared and underinsured.
• As a result, they are vulnerable to paralyzing and costly data breaches and system shutdowns, for which they often must pay crippling ransoms.
• Kim Milford, executive director of the Research and Education Networks Information and Sharing Analysis Center (REN-ISAC), a nonprofit based at Indiana University that coordinates cybersecurity information swapping among nearly 700 degree-granting institutions, said ransomware is “exploding” at a time when many of the network’s members are alarmed by the fast-rising cost of cybersecurity insurance.