It is an unfortunate reality, that while cybersecurity in Education is necessary to protect against financial loss and prevent disruption, it’s also crucial in order to protect the students from cyber attacks and further harm. Even though the Education sector faces major challenges such as staffing issues, and the lack of resources and funding, cyberattacks are no less frequent or severe. Moreover, cyberattacks against schools and places of higher education appear to be becoming more frequent, and widely reported.
Higher education facilities face unique threats to their data security, as hackers will target their systems for the sensitive information that they may contain. Unlike retails or other targets, universities often hold proprietary research data on their systems. It is also very common for these school systems to be large and complex, making implementing secure protections on the environment very difficult. Disruptions from these attacks has been seen to have a large impact, such as the attack in 2016 against the Minnesota school district, that caused the school to close for over 24 hours.
The more frightening aspect of these breaches is that student safety can become compromised. Educational facilities are entrusted to safeguard their students, many of whom are minors, and a compromised or weak cybersecurity infrastructure can put them at risk. This became extremely apparent after it emerged that CCTV camera feeds from several blackpool schools ended up streaming online after an apparent security blunder by the facilities management for the school. This is exactly the reason as to why the sector needs to do everything it can to ensure their applications and systems are protected, and work to overcome the challenges that they face.
The SEQ|OPS team works as a collective force, defending organizations from cybersecurity threats. We do this for our participants by implementing a quantifiable security operation that has a proven effect and efficiency in the field. Organizations choose the SEQ|OPS team to solve a variety of operational hurdles that their operations encounter such as; moving their security program from the reactive to the pro-active, enacting that 24x7x365 monitoring for their environment, and to share proven processes and capabilities with other cybersecurity professionals working in the industry. If you would like some assistance in getting started, feel free to give us a call.