At a recent I-Light conference, OmniSOC led a session on tabletop exercises with member institutions. The session shared feedback from I-Light members for whom OmniSOC has facilitated these exercises and demonstrated how they help identify vulnerabilities. Members said these exercises provide real value by helping their organizations prepare for incident reporting and offering clear guidance… Read more »

In July 2025, VirusTotal analysts uncovered a phishing campaign that relied on more than 500 malicious SVG files. Nearly fifty of the samples slipped past antivirus tools at the time of their first submission. The attachments looked like ordinary government portal icons. In reality, they carried code that redirected unsuspecting users to counterfeit login pages… Read more »

October is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM)! Co-led by the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), NCSAM is an effort to provide resources to keep Americans safer and more secure online. To celebrate, REN-ISAC is offering a variety of free webinars during the month of October. Check our… Read more »

This August, the 2025 REN-ISAC and OmniSOC’s Rising Stars Cohort graduated with a presentation of their projects aimed at leading organizational change. Rising Stars is a staff-development initiative within REN-ISAC aimed at cultivating people-leaders and changemakers within the organization. The 2025 cohort of Rising Stars were nominated by their managers to participate in the program…. Read more »

TLP: CLEAR In a June 30, 2025 joint fact sheet, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Defense (DOD) Cyber Crime Center (DC3), and the National Security Agency (NSA) “strongly urge organizations to remain vigilant for potential targeted cyber activity against U.S. critical infrastructure and other… Read more »

We are pleased to announce the members on your 2025 Steering Committee, as elected by you. After holding Steering Committee elections, we have added three new committee members who are eager to represent our community (newly elected members noted in bold). Frank Barton, Husson University Paul Drake, Notre Dame Tim Goth, Indiana University Emily Harris,… Read more »

February 2025 brought exciting new REN-ISAC membership benefits and services. We updated our online resources to enable single sign-on (SSO), allowing you to use one password for all REN-ISAC services. We also enabled multi-factor authentication to ensure the security of our membership community We know that information sharing enhances higher education’s overall security standings. To… Read more »

The REN-ISAC has recently launched the Information Security Kickstart, a brand-new Information Security Assessment and Advisory Services (ISAAS) offering designed to assist smaller colleges and universities. Shane Albright was inspired to come up with the InfoSec Kickstart concept based on his previous role as a systems administrator. “I worked in an understaffed and underfunded division… Read more »

REN-ISAC is happy to announce that our assessment service has been rebranded as  Information Security Assessment and Advisory Services (ISAAS). More than just a name change, ISAAS offers an expanded catalog of services to best fit your organizational needs, including  Comprehensive General Assessments: Utilizing the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, these assessments provide a thorough evaluation of… Read more »

The Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA) requires the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Agency (CISA) to develop and implement incident reporting regulations for critical infrastructure entities. The proposed rule is open for public comments until July 3. Because CIRCIA will affect a large percentage of US higher education and research institutions, the REN-ISAC is encouraging… Read more »