One of the most prestigious schools in information technology also ranks first among its peers in information security—first among the worst, that is. In a recent security survey of 485 colleges and universities around the world with 1,000 or more public Internet Protocol addresses, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ranked at the bottom, earning just above an overall failing grade. The assessment, performed by the information security assessment company SecurityScorecard, gave MIT a nearly failing grade, putting the school in the basement below New Mexico State University and Cambridge University.
"One of the most prestigious and recognized schools of higher learning in the world, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is not displaying strength in its security posture," the SecurityScorecard researchers reported. "With nearly 80,000 IP addresses discovered in the SecurityScorecard platform, the Cambridge college is showing a plethora of security risks, vulnerabilities, and weaknesses. To receive an overall ‘D’ grade, an organization needs to rank poorly in many of the 10 categories captured in SecurityScorecard. In this case, MIT has four ‘F’ grades, and two ‘D’ grades out of ten."
Based on data collected in late August, MIT scored low in: