ISMS and BCM for Universities, Colleges and Research Institutions

Universities and colleges have long been in the crosshairs of cybercriminals. Attacks on German universities have surged massively in recent years, with sometimes months-long outages of entire IT infrastructures. When email systems, learning platforms, library systems and research databases fail, the entire university operation comes to a standstill: exams cannot be held, research projects are interrupted and application processes are delayed.

Universities process large amounts of sensitive data: personal data of students and staff, confidential research results, patent applications, medical data at university clinics, and data from industry collaborations. Data protection is correspondingly complex. Processing activities range from student administration and examinations to research data with personal reference. Each must be documented in the records of processing activities (RoPA). Added to this are data protection impact assessments (DPIA), the handling of data subject requests and the maintenance of data processing agreements with often three-digit numbers of external service providers.

The regulatory landscape further increases pressure: the NIS-2 Directive classifies research institutions as potentially affected institutions. Together with ISO 27001, BSI IT-Grundschutz and state-specific IT security policies, an environment emerges that makes a professional ISMS mandatory. Many federal states additionally require a documented information security concept for universities.

The particular challenge at universities: extremely decentralized IT structures. Every faculty, every institute and often every chair operates its own systems, frequently without central governance. Hundreds of applications, self-developed research software and legacy systems coexist without a uniform security concept. Added to this are high turnover in access rights, international cooperations with complex data exchange, a historically grown BYOD environment and dual-use research with additional export control regulations.

At the same time, universities face enormous budget pressure. Dedicated IT security teams are the exception; security measures are often implemented reactively rather than systematically. To build up ISMS, data protection and BCMS professionally even with limited resources, an increasing number of universities rely on specialized GRC software with automated workflows, pre-built catalogs of measures and AI-powered support.

The consequences of an IT outage extend far beyond administrative operations. Research data can be lost irretrievably, examination periods must be postponed, third-party funded projects fall behind, and the reputation of the institution suffers lasting damage.

Many universities have IT emergency plans for individual systems, but no systematic Business Continuity Management (BCM). The difference is decisive: a BCMS considers the entire university operation as an interconnected system. It begins with a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) that identifies time-critical processes (examination management, identity management, research infrastructure). Building on this, recovery time objectives (RTO) are defined and operational emergency handbooks with clear instructions for crisis teams and IT managers are created.

The NIS-2 Directive explicitly requires affected institutions to implement measures for maintaining operations. The increasing dependence on cloud services, digital learning platforms and research data management systems makes systematic emergency planning indispensable.

For universities, the decisive factor is the parallel implementation of ISMS, BCMS and data protection. All three areas share data on assets, risks and processes. If they are managed in different tools or Excel spreadsheets, redundancy and unnecessary extra effort emerge. Parallel implementation, on the other hand, offers tangible benefits: assets from the ISMS flow directly into the BCMS BIA, risk assessments inform emergency scenarios, and technical measures (TOMs) are automatically available in the data protection context.

The Data Protection module of the Akarion GRC Cloud covers the entire GDPR lifecycle: from records of processing activities through data protection impact assessments to handling data subject requests. Because it works on the same data foundation as ISMS and BCMS, assets and processes do not need to be maintained twice.

The Akarion GRC Cloud thus maps ISMS, BCMS and data protection on a central data foundation. Assets and processes are captured once and are available across all modules. The result is a holistic management system that is ready to use with no setup costs and grows with the institution's requirements.

For universities and colleges, a functioning management system for information security, data protection and business continuity is unavoidable given regulatory requirements. The question is not whether, but how efficiently build-up and operation can succeed — especially under the budget and personnel pressure typical at universities.

The Akarion GRC Cloud, the SaaS platform of the German GRC software provider AKARION, offers the right foundation: with no setup costs, ready to use immediately and with the depth needed for complex university structures:

• ISMS, BCMS and Data Protection on a central data foundation: capture assets, processes and risks once and use them across modules, without redundancy or duplicate work
• Data protection management according to GDPR: centrally manage records of processing activities, data protection impact assessments, data subject requests and data processing agreements. TOMs from the ISMS are automatically adopted, data breaches can be documented and reported to supervisory authorities
• Business continuity with BIA, SLA/OLA management and emergency handbooks: identify time-critical university processes (exams, research infrastructure, identity management), define recovery times and link emergency plans directly with immediate measures (compliant with ISO 22301 and BSI 200-4)
• Multi-tenancy and inheritance for decentralized university structures: centrally define templates, roles and security policies and roll them out to faculties, institutes and administrative units, with top-down and bottom-up inheritance
• Smart Content AI for AI-powered generation of risk scenarios, business impact scenarios, measures and audit content, with up to 80% time savings during initial setup
• Simultaneous mapping of multiple standards: ISO 27001, BSI IT-Grundschutz, NIS-2, BSI C5 and other frameworks in parallel, without duplicate work on overlapping requirements
• Integrated audit management with digital checklists, third-party risk management and seamless tracking of measures, for BSI evidence, state security policies and internal audits
• Multilingual interface for international research teams, including automatic translation of content
• plus customizable dashboards and reporting for compliance that can be demonstrated at any time to supervisory authorities, third-party funding bodies and accreditation agencies.

As a SaaS solution, the Akarion GRC Cloud remains accessible even in a crisis — a decisive advantage over locally hosted solutions that are unavailable during an attack on university IT.

AKARION itself is ISO 27001 certified and officially listed by the BSI as an IT-Grundschutz tool. Hosting takes place 100% on European servers (STACKIT), ensuring true digital sovereignty and the protection of sensitive research and personnel data. The platform is additionally extensible with Whistleblowing and other modules.

Over 900 organizations already trust the Akarion GRC Cloud, including universities such as TU Graz and WU Vienna.

Practice shows: the use of a specialized GRC platform offers significant benefits over fragmented solutions, especially at resource-constrained universities:

• Efficiency gains through redundancy-free linking of all documents, particularly valuable in decentralized structures with many participants
• Cross-faculty documentation with transparent reports at the push of a button for university leadership and CIOs
• Faster compliance evidence to third-party funding bodies, accreditation agencies and state ministries
• Cheaper external audits through prior internal audits and traceable preparation in one system
• Demonstrable maturity as an argument to funding bodies that increasingly require IT security concepts as a prerequisite for approval
• and location-independent collaboration for information security officers, data protection officers and administrators across sites.

The combination of intuitive usability, flexible scalability and technical depth (from risk analysis through business impact analyses to audit preparation) makes the Akarion GRC Cloud the ideal tool for universities that want not only to document but actively shape information security and resilience.