Higher education is shifting cybersecurity from a purely technical duty to a board-level business risk, as universities face direct consequences from outages and breaches on student retention, grant funding, and research continuity. The reporting underscores that institutions are being judged on resilience, not just compliance—especially as digital workloads expand across teaching, advising, and research operations. At the same time, new AI-era security tools are emerging to address phishing, deepfakes, and other trust failures. Reken’s on-device AI security platform (Northstar, built on its Private Core) highlights a model increasingly relevant for campuses: reducing dependence on cloud processing for sensitive communications. For campus leaders, the combined message is clear: cybersecurity strategy is now inseparable from institutional performance and reputation, while “AI-to-defend-against-AI” is moving quickly from concept to products that can be deployed on standard hardware. Procurement, governance, and incident response planning are where the gap between threat and readiness will show up first.