Strategies to help your institution combat cyberattacks

It doesn’t matter where you look. Today, technology is everywhere. In educational organizations, tech has become a crucial part of the daily learning process, fundamentally changing the way students learn, how teachers educate, and how learning institutions operate. Whether doing research in a computer lab or conducting classwork on a personal tablet, students and teachers are more connected now than ever before. Of course, with such connection, there comes potential of cyber threats and cyberattacks. Since 2016, there have been 688 publicly-disclosed cybersecurity-related incidents involving U.S. public schools and 61 public school districts have experienced more than one cybersecurity incident. One might ask, “Why are attackers targeting schools?” Beyond the troves of personally-identifiable information (PII) on students and staff, there is frequently sensitive—and lucrative—data associated with research projects being conducted at the schools. According to the 2018 Education Cybersecurity Report, institutions struggle with application security, endpoint security, and patching cadence. Multiple types of bad actors can target these vulnerabilities at schools. They could be someone seeking profit from the sale or use of stolen personal data, young people involved in some sort of a prank, or possibly even foreign governments looking to exploit research-related data.