Cybersecurity: the next academic integrity frontier

The digital world poses threats to academic integrity, providing improved access and awareness of cheating products and services. Some of these phenomena, such as contract cheating and auto paraphrasing tools, have been the topic of research and debate in recent years. In contrast, computer hacking is a long-standing threat to academic integrity that has received very little attention in the academic integrity literature. This contrasts with other high-stakes fields such as banking, healthcare and gambling, where hacking has been a concern for researchers for decades. This chapter argues that cybersecurity is an essential element of academic integrity, especially in online and blended learning settings, and as such, research into academic integrity urgently needs to consider cybersecurity. This chapter also identifies methodologies and metaphors from cybersecurity that may assist academic integrity research more broadly.