Colleges are confronting an AI‑enabled escalation in cyber threats even as they rush to adopt generative tools across campus services. Attackers are increasingly using AI to scale phishing, craft deepfakes and exploit identity systems; institutions respond with AI‑driven detection, Zero Trust architectures and tighter third‑party oversight. Security leaders told Fortune and campus CIOs that proactive, behavior‑based detection and identity controls are now indispensable. IT chiefs at research universities also warned about shadow AI—services running on third‑party platforms that expose student and research data. Experts recommend formal AI risk frameworks, inventories of where AI runs on campus, and governance that ties policy to procurement and privacy protections. The net effect: higher operational costs, new compliance duties for research offices, and an urgency for board‑level cybersecurity literacy as campuses balance AI adoption with data‑security obligations.