The cybersecurity challenges in the education sector continue to rise in volume and complexity. Educational institutions are a prime target for attack due to the vast amount of sensitive data they hold, from personal information on staff and students to valuable research data. Recently, the sector’s attack surface has increased, driven in-part by the growth in e-learning, accelerated use of collaborative apps, increased remote access, and the sheer number of devices and the diversity of operating systems on the network.
Illustrating the scale of the challenge, the frequency of ransomware attacks in education has increased considerably in recent years with 56% of lower education and 64% of higher education organizations reporting being hit by ransomware in 2021, up from 44% in 2020*. More broadly, almost half of education organizations reported an increase in the volume, complexity, and impact of cyberattacks on their organizations over the previous year. Read the full report here.
The education sector faces unique challenges
Evolving attacker tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) and the growing professionalism of the cybercrime industry are significant drivers behind today’s complex threat landscape. A number of additional factors further compound the cybersecurity challenge facing the education sector:
Students and staff need 24/7 access to online portals via a multitude of devices
School districts and universities need to enable the secure exchange of personal data, digital teaching content, financial transactions, and more across different departments and sites
The number of private and school-issued devices accessing the network continues to grow, as does the number of educational technologies and apps
Encryption protocols used in collaboration and data sharing tools create blind spots for protection technologies, allowing cybercriminals to carry out malicious activities undetected, such as cloaking data exfiltration operations and hiding command-and-control traffic
Schools need to ensure compliance with regulations and maintain student safety while using the internet
Cybercriminals are actively attempting to exploit the use of cloud-based technologies as cybersecurity practices are less established than in traditional on-premises environments
