The education sector is at particular risk of cyber attacks or data breaches. Schools hold important and confidential information on their staff and students, making them an attractive target for hackers.
However, there is a large skills gap in the education sector when it comes to cyber safety. Teaching cybersecurity in your institution can not only lower the risk of a hack but boost your students’ future work prospects by giving them vital hard skills.
The Internet has mostly had a positive impact on how schools run. Many schools and universities, for example, use file sharing software to exchange homework and assignments between staff and students.
The efficiency of software has made it difficult to imagine returning to the world of education without it. But, when a cybersecurity breach hits, you might come to wish you’d never started relying on such technological conveniences.
Luckily, there are plenty of measures that can be taken to create a safer network for your staff, students, and their private data.
Essentially, you can either build or buy your cybersecurity program – or combine both.
Below, we’ll guide you through some simple yet effective tips for creating a cybersecurity program at your school.
Building your program
Have an Incident Response Plan
No matter how securely you create your cyber-environment, you will never be 100% safe from attack. Your school should have a plan to protect data from ransomware attacks, general malware attacks, and distributed denial-of-service attacks.
Your own tech-savvy staff and students could pose a threat, so make sure an incident response plan is made available to all.
Included in your cybersecurity plan should be the contact information for the providers of your software. In a crisis, the last thing you want to be doing is searching for a helpline number.
Log Potential Insider Threats
This is not to say that a member of staff or a local authority with whom you share your data is in themselves a threat (though you never know), but that their access to your data can be hijacked.
Many universities, for example, partner with other universities for research projects or to share resources. Keeping a log of who has access to what data allows you to narrow down and identify the chink in your armor quickly should an attack strike.
This information should also be stored in your incident response plan. A plan of action for each potential insider threat will mean that if your school’s network is ever infiltrated, you can ensure it’s for the least time possible.
Educate Students
We’re living in an ever-expanding digital age, and with the rise of remote learning, how to be safe online is critical to students and staff.
Building a cybersecurity culture in education is vital for ensuring the safety of children in particular.
A creative and more effective way of teaching students about cybersecurity would be by using the web. If you find an appropriate cheap web hosting platform, you can present an interactive workshop on how to stay safe online.
As cybersecurity is such an important issue for young people, there are gamified cybersecurity educational resources out there for you to explore too.
It is especially worthwhile to educate your peers about GPS (Global Positioning System). Many devices nowadays will automatically have GPS activated. But why should you care?
With GPS activated, posting an update to your social media allows other users to learn your exact location.
Younger students could be particularly at risk of unknowingly announcing their location to the Internet.
While GPS is instrumental for geo-targeting or online maps, it can also have much more sinister applications. Keep your students safe by encouraging them to keep their GPS switched off, especially in school.
Buying your program
Know Your Software and Hardware
Encryption is a key part of cybersecurity. When deciding which software to invest in for your school, consider how much importance the provider places on safety and security in their sales channel strategy.
Hardware can easily be damaged or destroyed. Make sure you often back up your network’s data and files to avoid losing vital information. A student won’t be too happy if their assignment is saved on the school network and disappears! (On that note, you should encourage students to save their work to the PC and on a USB stick or a cloud drive.)
Implement Firewalls and Filters
No matter how much you try to educate your peers on online safety – there is always the risk of someone making a mistake. And one mistake is all it takes to let a hacker in.
Buying antivirus software for your network will enable you to install firewalls, stopping enticing and realistic pop-ups from potentially reeling in your staff and students. Just one click could give a hacker all the access they need.
Over the years, phishing emails have arguably got more and more creative and disguised. A person who spends less time online than others could easily fall victim to opening that dodgy link.
It is easiest to eliminate the threat at the root. Install filters in your network’s inboxes. A lot of email services now will include spam filtering by default, but not everything can always be caught.
Your tech professionals should be up to date on the latest trends in phishing emails and know what sorts of email subjects or keywords to block from reaching inboxes.
If a dodgy email does pass through the net, alert all members of staff and students immediately.
Partnering with a Cybint Bootcamp
At the end of the day, there is only so much you can do with your devices to stop a cybersecurity crisis at your school. You must educate your staff and students on online safety. And now that we see that cybersecurity plays such a vital part in everyone’s daily life – outside of the cybersecurity team – it’s important that we present the same learning opportunity for students to step into this field.
This is best done through education.
Educating Staff and Students
The Cybint Cybersecurity Bootcamp is an opportunity to provide your students an accelerated program that will prepare them for the cyber industry.Â
Bootcamps can be completed on a full or part-time basis to fit your schedule and are conducted by industry experts to provide up to 480 hours of skills-training that can be understood by beginners. Furthermore, with the rise of teleconference calls through VoIP phones, there is no excuse not to attend a virtual session. Indeed, Cybint maximizes its accessibility as a blended and flexible online platform filled with evergreen content.Â
To learn more about how you can launch a cyber bootcamp at your school, download our Ultimate Cybersecurity Bootcamp Guide to get started.
