Two women using laptops in a classroom. — Photo courtesy of EdTech.

Posted on April 1, 2025 by Tina Reed

Why Removing Technical Debt Is Important to Higher Ed Cybersecurity

Reducing technical debt is a matter of prioritization.

“Enterprises in all industries have legacy applications and outdated infrastructure, but higher education institutions often accrue technical debt because they tend to delay technology upgrades or turn to short-term solutions to meet their needs, according to EDUCAUSE.

“Technical debt is prevalent because budgets are stretched thin and organizations want to maximize their investments,” says Scott Ragsdale, senior director of U.S. healthcare, state, local and education sales at Nutanix. “It’s not uncommon to see them try to get three to five years more out of their hardware and software investments.”

As higher education budgets tighten, it’s understandable that institutions want to make the most of their existing technology rather than invest in new equipment, but that practice can leave colleges and universities vulnerable to cyberthreats.

Technical Debt Limits Visibility Into Higher Education’s Vulnerabilities

Legacy systems, and the IT teams that manage them, tend to be siloed. That makes incident response difficult. With limited visibility across the enterprise, organizations may have trouble discerning where problems start. That places an emphasis on troubleshooting, which all too often can lead to finger pointing, extending the time it takes to mitigate a threat.

“As threats evolve, technical debt becomes a roadblock,” says Jeff Olson, director of SD-WAN product and technical marketing at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. “Security protocols and standards have advanced to address common threats, but if you have older technology, you’re at risk until you can upgrade your devices.”

Upgrades can prove challenging, though. Without an enterprisewide view of what’s been deployed where, it’s difficult to manually patch every single laptop, device or network endpoint, Olson adds. Unfortunately, that leaves vulnerabilities in place.”