Higher Education Institutions (HEI) store large amounts of personal data and generally do not allocate adequate resources to securing data. This makes HEIs especially attractive and easy targets for threat actors. Attacks on HEIs have increased by more than 44% in 2022 alone and continue to increase at an alarming rate. Successful attacks on educational institutions can and have had far-reaching impacts on the data and the individuals whose data are compromised. To mitigate attacks and reduce the damage caused by successful attacks, HEIs must take proactive actions including having Incident Response Plans (IRP) in place. An IRP will allow security and other personnel to know exactly what to do, in the order it should be done in the event of an attack. This will not only allow for quick responses but will remove most of the guesswork and trial and error from responding to cyber-attacks. This paper looks at the common threats HEIs are exposed to and examines the role of Incident Response Planning in reducing the impact of such cyber-attacks on higher education institutions.