Importance of cyber security in education sector

Education is the necessity of human beings and the most prominent and growing industry in businesses and commercial establishments everywhere. Educational institutes are increasingly fast, and with the merger of technology, it’s becoming vast and easily approachable to everyone.

But the internet is an open source of knowledge that opens the doors for cybercriminals. It is a myth that cyber-criminals only target commercial enterprises and multinationals; instead, they also target money-making educational institutes (governmental, private, medical bodies, businesses, etc.)   

With the fastest-growing internet and newer technologies, we are exposed to cyber threats. Therefore, cyber security is getting a huge demand, especially in the education sector. More and more security breaches have been reported in schools and higher education in the last few years. It has become mandatory to provide cyber security to the education sector globally.

It has been observed that the pandemic has raised the level of cyber-attacks in the education sector, as, during the lockdown, the online platform was only available for teaching and learning. Learning over a network is easily targeted by hackers and steals sensitive data online (student, teachers, and staff members' confidential information). Computers are now an essential part of the education sector, including working at school, college, home, and workplaces. 

Reasons for the education sector becoming lucrative for cybercriminals

• Financial gain

Cybercriminals commit crime and theft data of schools and institute for financial gain only. They can demand ransom or sell all the sensitive information on the internet. Hackers hack the school or institute computer system and block access to it until a ransom is paid to them. Hackers also create duplicate websites or fee-paying portals that capture all the sensitive transaction information (transfer of a large amount of money).

• Valuable data

Even though educational institutions may not look as lucrative as healthcare companies or private businesses, they serve as a treasure trove of sensitive financial and personal information, including valuable proprietary research data.

• Impacting Operations

A wide variety of attacks on the institutions have been carried out to create widespread disruption and affect institute productivity.

• Espionage

Large universities and institutions hold the historical and intellectual property due to which they face the threat of espionage. Hackers can gain access to military institute data and other valuable data. Despite it, they follow the browsing history of institutes, teachers, staff, and students by doing espionage attacks. Cyber security training online or tools are required.

• Wealth of PII

Educational institutes like schools and universities consist of all candidates' personal information in their systems like their financial details, passport number, social security number, health care data, etc. All the higher institutes contain PII (personally identifiable information), which acts as a trunk for hackers to breach the data. PII is the wealth for hackers to earn money, so educational institutes review its cyber protection by recruiting cyber security experts to deal with it.

Another reason why attackers find universities and colleges as easily accessible targets.

• Use of lots of application
• Use of open networks
• Still, educational institutes are not enough to secure
• Students are easy targets for hackers
• Lots of devices
• Big campuses are open to strangers and friendly too  

Cyber security threat to the education sector

• Ransomware

The education sector is the most common target of ransomware attacks said to the FBI. Hackers attack the system with ransomware and corrupt the files in exchange for ransom money for the decryption key to unlock the corrupted files. These prevent users from accessing the files or network. In the previous two years, ransomware attacks have increased fast, recorded, and warned by NCSC- National Cyber Security Centre.  

• BEC attack

Attackers restore BEC (business email compromise) attacks to target education sector organizations. All the primary work is committed to Gmail accounts, which serve as the primary medium for launching most BEC attacks. Probably 86% of all BEC attacks are accomplished in academic institutions.

• Social Engineering

A complex scam is conducted on the social engineering platform. The social media platform is an easy and approachable method for an attacker to target a person or educational institute's personal/ private information. Attackers can also use different methods like phishing, fraud phone call, SMS, and some typical method used to steal login credentials.

• Insecure Home Learning Environments

          Covid-19 has boosted the remote learning strategy, but this requires good security in a home environment as personal devices are used in work, which is the entry point of the vulnerabilities and other attacks. Therefore home learning is the most insecure one.

• Spear phishing attack

Spear phishing attacks are different from common cyber-attacks targeting specific individuals or groups. Spear phishing attacks use social media, emails, instant messaging, and other platforms to fetch users' personal information resulting in data loss, network compromise, or financial losses. These attacks include attachments and emails that contain information specific to the target (user name and rank within the company).  

• Data breaches

Data breaches result in expensive and massive losses for schools, colleges, and universities. It is a method where user information is stolen without user acknowledgment or system authorization. Some data beach methods are unintended disclosure, payment card fraud, unknown fraud, insider leak, loss or theft, etc. Due to huge valuable cache/information, data breaches are most common in the education sector.

• DDoS attacks

Distributed denial of service is a common cyber-attack on websites and online users, including educational institutes. DDoS attacks slow down the online productivity of network or interconnect connections. Various large organizations got affected by DDoS attacks, including GitHub, Amazon Web Services, and Dyn.    

Some important tips for schools and institutes to protect themselves from cyber criminals within their budget and available resources:

• Giving training to staff and students

Schoolwork depends on staff, teachers, and students, so these pillars (staff, teachers, and students) must be aware of suspecting online threats and how to deal with them. For the cyber incident planning and response training for IT staff in the institutions, the administration invests once a year. It creates a cyber incident response plan that protects the educational institute from cyber-attacks and reputational and financial damage.

• Hiring It professional team for the institute

Educational institutes suffer from phishing attacks, ransomware, and DDoS, so to prevent them, educational institutes opt for cost-effective services and one-time investments that increase overall cyber resilience. Large and small institutes hire IT professionals team that make and run security software with security parameters that protect the educational institutes from many cyber threats. During the pandemic, IT professionals played a vital role in institutions. For the first time, whole education ran online, and teachers, students, and parents were also new. IT professionals handle all the technical and non-technical problems and make education approachable to everyone. 

• Staff and teachers should use two-step verification

Every device in school should be protected with a password, and teachers, other staff, and students should use two-step verification in which just a password is not required to log in. With a password, the user has to answer a secret question, enter a numeric code, or solve a puzzle.

• Live fire drills

"Live fire drills" are implemented by the administration and consist of mock cyber-attack during regular school hours. This type of drill in school is relayed to everyone in emails, text messages, etc. With the help of this drill, students and teachers practice the cyber-attack situation and work to respond and resolve the crisis.  

• Identity access management system

School administration system uses an identity access management system to prevent unauthorized access to a network that help to keep intruder at bay and fill the loopholes of security.

Conclusion

The education sector needs cyber security to a great extent to protect its data from each endpoint. Cyber attackers choose the educational area due to its huge area of attack, the value of information is high, and they can operate in an open technology environment. Everyone can prevent these risks by understanding them, hunting for the threats, and smartly detecting malicious attacks.