Why does Cybersecurity Need to be a Priority for the Education Sector?

Cybersecurity in Education is a growing concern as realization and understanding from teachers and students are necessary to save themselves from cyber-attacks.

As rightfully said “If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, you will be hacked. What’s more, you deserve to be hacked.”

Here everyone must understand that education cyber security is really significant to protect students' content, subject matters, finances and any other crucial information.

As cyberattacks are increasing in popularity, it is really important to draw attention towards cybersecurity in schools, cyber security in universities and cybersecurity for students in general.

( source: Leadership Circle)

Many students use apps, websites and best-rated essay writing services to learn information on day-to-day basis. So, in order to keep their content and learning method safe and secure. It should be considered to teach students to keep their login details safe.

Let’s get familiar with the attack surface used by hackers to hack the educational sector due to the lack of cyber security in Education.

Attack Surface in Cyber Security in Education

There is an increase in cyber-attacks in the world due to the vast nature of the educational sector. As a result, in order to prevent those prone attackers’ different kinds of knowledge and training are provided on the topic of cyber security in schools and universities.

As per the research in the UK itself, there are over 2.3 million students going to different educational institutions.

In order to get students informed about the attack surface different courses regarding cybersecurity in schools are being made.

But, right now, let’s get familiar with the most attacked surface in details:

1. Theft of Necessary Data

(source: SEJ)

Every education institution whether they are a kindergarten or a top university record and keep data properly so that they can be used as a source for the future reference.

These data include, different personal and private credentials which cannot be shared with anyone. If it is hacked and used that can invade the students, professors, staffs or administrative workers privacy.

It will finally lead to ransomware attack. In order to prevent that users must make sure that there is education cyber security maintained in an ample amount.

2. Payment System

Almost every educational institution keeps the payment system to record all the fees, incomes, expenditures and much more financial transactions.

There is a possibility that attackers try to attack the payment system directly in order to gain the information or to steal the money.

The payment in not only paid through money but also online sometimes. In order to prevent all the cybersecurity in school, colleges and universities, it must be made sure that there are different level of protection enabled for the tight security.

3. Spying

It is a fact that different hackers spy into different things like the information, papers created through best paper writers, data or any valuable or intellectual property.

These kinds of documents are generally stolen by competitors in order to steal the information and gain the main idea or concept being the others planning.

This will eventually lead to destroy the cyber security in education as they need to stop the ongoing projects.

4. DDoS Attacks

Denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) is a spiteful attack that interrupts the targeted server, network or services. Attackers work in such a way to interrupt network or machines so that they are not available.

The worst part is that it tries to overwhelm the respective website with traffic driving rate that is not even real.

Denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) are of three types. They are listed below

Application Layer Attacks
Volumetric Attacks
Protocol Attacks

Ways to Have Proper Cybersecurity in Education

As we got familiar with attack surface in cyber security in education. Let’s get familiar with the need to make cybersecurity a priority for the education sector. There are only certain easy to ensure education cyber security.

Let’s get started!

1. Provide Training

Providing training regarding cyber security for students can be as easy as communicating with them. All that is required is to inform them about the growing cybercrimes and ways to tackle it and protect themselves.

Training can be provided in both oral and written form. Not only students but cyber security in schools and universities should be provided to teachers, staffs and administrators as well.

In order to understand things better they should also be provided with sound knowledge about network security, internet issues and much more.

2. Proper Authentication

(source: Auth0)

Authentication is a process keep the network secured and safe by accessing only those uses who have proper authentication access.

It is available in different kind of combinations like data, face passcodes, QR codes, passwords, pass cards, digital signatures, fingerprint, retinal, and voice scans.

There are generally five types of authentications. They are listed below

Password-based Authentication
Certificate-based Authentication
Multi-factor Authentication
Biometric Authentication
Eye scanners
Speech recognition
Fingerprint scanners
Facial recognition
Token-based Authentication

Authentication will properly verify users’ identity before accessing to any respective network. It is generally provided through cohesive authentication and security protection.

3. Own Live Fire Drills

Live Fire Drills in cyber security personal is a technical aspect that makes sure to provide response to incident and different skills of teams.

Doing this the security is tighten by providing risk assessment. Moreover, this way users will have the ability to response without much more hassle.

The information about basic drill ideas can be circulated through emails, text messages and much more. This way there is no probability of anyone missing out on the important information.

Moreover, the universities and students with budget focuses more on the ‘Live Fire’ drills. It is also cost-effective and suitable for educational institutions.

Importance of Education Cyber Security

When we reach to this part of this article, we are not completely aware of the significance of education cyber security.

Now, without wasting further time, let’s get familiar with some of the points

Provides detailed and comprehensive and complete information to students about various important way to protect themselves from cyber attackers.
Secondly, students will also gain ample of knowledge about malware, scams, phishing, threats on internet and much more.
Education Cyber Security provides idea on all the do’s and don’ts in the internet.
Teaches the right way to protect all personal information, reputation of the school, colleges, universities, data management, cyber posture and educate the workforce.

Wrapping Up

We hope this article helped you have a better understanding on the importance of cybersecurity in education. In order for a college, university, school and its students to grow, it must be considered that cybersecurity is always kept in mind.

In this article we had a detailed knowledge on attack surface in educational sector, proper ways to maintain cybersecurity in education and its importance in the end.

If you have any other suggestions that can be listed in this article then feel free to share it with us in the comment sections below.

We hope you will be able to gain proper cybersecurity for your respective educational institution.