Emailing a former professor about research breakthroughs. Downloading copyrighted papers off the internet. Sharing login credentials. Aren’t these all harmless characteristics of academia? Everyday tricks of the scholarly trade? Alan Brill, Senior Managing Director in the Cyber Risk practice at Kroll, warns that seemingly harmless actions or good intentions may lead to serious consequences—can the push toward academic freedom end up endangering our information in the process?

In this final episode, Alan discusses hackers’ exploitation of free-flowing information. He tackles the issue of Sci-Hub—the controversial website that shares pirated research—and the importance of respecting patents, copyright protection, and trade secrets. Alan also reveals his perspective on emerging threats in cybersecurity, and why cyber risk preparation at a university is so essential in today’s information age. “There is no such thing as 100 percent protection … What we need is a pre-planned incident response program … so that when it happens—and I think the only rational position today is don’t think in terms of if, think in terms of when it happens—you’re going to know what to do.”

Missed an episode? Subscribe to our monthly newsletter, Choice Podcast Updates and check out the Authority File Round-Up on our blog, Open Stacks!