Educational Institutions: Are They Easy Victims of Ransomware?

Educational institutions are less likely than others to detect in-progress attacks, which naturally leads to higher attack success and encryption rates.

The critical information they possess, like learning data that is supplemented with background data, provides information on how well students are learning, what variables are linked to achievement, and which groups perform poorly. This distinguishes them from the other numerous organizations targeted by the serious cyber threat. System analysis, better resource allocation, agenda setting, and the policy cycle can all benefit from this information.

According to a report by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center, the average school spends less than 8% of its IT budget on cybersecurity, with one in five schools spending less than 1%. Cyber attackers find it easy to penetrate their networks as they have weak security compared to other industries.

9 security practices that should be followed in every educational institution.

1. Deploy stronger password policies and use two-factor authentication to keep your endpoints secured.

2. Eliminate software and firmware vulnerabilities by staying up-to-date with released patches.

3. Actively audit and monitor all activities in your network, auditing your ports, firewall, BitLocker and identifying suspicious incidents.

4. Uninstall outdated and high-risk software once identified on your network.

5. Allow installation of safe and secure applications on your network.

6. To avoid insider attacks, establish privilege management and just-in-time access controls for users.

7. Block malicious web extensions and web applications on your browsers to prevent browser-based attacks.

8. Monitor and manage peripheral devices on your network to prevent data leakage.

9. Backup your data at regular intervals

Enforcing these security practices can be a bit difficult, especially in a school environment that often has limited resources dedicated to IT security. Not all security solutions let you follow all the practices mentioned above, so it can be even more difficult for the IT admins of schools and educational institutions as they might need to maintain multiple solutions to achieve security.