The education industry is the most targeted sector globally for cyber attacks. With decentralized vendor ownership across faculties and lean security teams, relying on manual risk management programs makes it difficult to maintain full visibility of your attack surface. UpGuard automates the discovery and assessment of these third parties, turning manual, flat lists into a validated security posture in real-time.
Through our collaboration with Internet2, UpGuard provides higher education teams with a trusted starting point that reduces evaluation efforts from the get-go. As an added benefit, Internet2 members are eligible for exclusive technology offers.
UpGuard was awarded the NET+ Third-Party Risk Management Request for Proposal and completed a service evaluation, meeting the rigorous security and compliance standards required by the academic community.
Automate education frameworks
Use templates for HECVAT 4, NIST, and ISO 27001 to evaluate your vendors directly within the UpGuard platform. Your team can maintain consistent and audit-ready assessments that align with both procurement and leadership from day one.
AI-Powered Security Profile
Uncover third-party control gaps and risks in minutes. Based on continuous scanning and robust AI document analysis, UpGuard Security Profiles gives you clarity in minutes.
Continuous risk monitoring
Manual, point-in-time assessments keep you in reactive mode. UpGuard alerts teams to vendor risk changes as they happen, allowing you to maintain your security posture year-round without waiting for the next renewal cycle.
The AI threat summary is great. It’s refreshing to read two sentences and immediately know why I should care about a finding. I can look at a critical alert, see that it’s exposed GitHub credentials from a classroom lab exercise, and move on within seconds because the context is right there.
Vendors, especially those who want to work with the higher education sector, have seen the writing on the wall and have decided that security questionnaires are necessary to show institutions they are happy to comply with security procedures.
Start faster, secure sooner
Vetting without the wait
The Internet2 Community has already done the homework on UpGuard, so that your team can skip the lengthy evaluation cycles and deploy with complete confidence.
Speed up procurement
Software procurement in Education often stalls in 18-month legal cycles. As part of the NET+ program, UpGuard utilizes a community-vetted Master Service Agreement (MSA) negotiated with the Internet2 Community, allowing you to bypass lengthy contracting hurdles in weeks rather than months
Trusted across institutions
Trusted by leading institutions, UpGuard provides a standardized framework for managing the complexities of decentralized vendor ownership. We provide the comprehensive insights and real-time alerts your team needs to maintain a resilient security posture across every faculty and department.
Resources
Secure your institution's TPRM future.
PDF
The State of University Cybersecurity
The State of University Cybersecurity
Learn about the state of cybersecurity in education and what should be done to increase cyber threat resilience in the industry.
The Best-Practices Guide: Tiering and Classifying Vendors by Inherent Risk
The Best-Practices Guide: Tiering and Classifying Vendors by Inherent Risk
Learn how to tier and classify vendors by inherent risk using clear criteria, weighted scoring, and override triggers. Build a defensible third-party risk program.
