The cyber crisis threatening British Higher Education is getting worse.
New data reveals that more than 144,000 sets of university login credentials were found on the dark web in a single year and the numbers are rising month on month.
In the twelve months to June 2026, more than 144,000 username and password combinations belonging to people working and studying in UK higher education were found circulating on the dark web. This figure comes from Jisc, the digital infrastructure organisation, that supports the UK's higher education and research sector. The situation is getting worse year on year. According to figures from Jisc in June 2025 there were fewer than 10,000 compromised identities recorded, one year later that figure had risen above 25,000 with April 2026 recording just over 20,000. What makes the current situation