Why Education Institutions Cannot Afford to Neglect Cyber Defense Initiatives?

Denial of service attacks (DoS) is the basic form of cyber-attacks targeted at educational institutions as they aim to disrupt the smooth functioning of the institution to achieve personal gains and motives.

Fremont, CA: Educational institutions humungous amount of data including the personal details of the students and their beneficiaries. Cyberattacks and threats carried out on such institutions often target ransom money and the extraction of personal and confidential data credentials of the students and faculties. Loss of such confidential data including minors could put their privacy and safety at stake, which is unacceptable and points to the need for quality cyber security measures.

Major reasons for which educational institutions are targeted are:

Data extraction

Educational institutions hold a huge amount of extremely sensitive data such as the contact and address details of students and staff. Data extracted can be sold to third-party organizations to gain money or to carry out personal defamation and attacks. The data theft process can be done at a go or through several steps making them difficult to cancel out.

Financial gains

Institutions having a larger number of students and online fee payment portals are prone to cyberattacks on their financial accounts and systems. Systems with minimal cyber protection measures attract the interest of cyber hackers towards the fee payment gateways of schools.

DoS attacks

Denial of service attacks (DoS) is the basic form of cyberattacks targeted at educational institutions as they aim to disrupt the smooth functioning of the firm to achieve personal gains and motives. Individuals with amateur knowledge and skill in cyber security can breach into poorly protected network systems of the educational sectors.

Espionage

Educational and research institutions hold data that are of political and military importance. Scientific research and development institutions are vulnerable to such attacks as they possess intellectual data on extremely important subjects.

Modes of Cyberattacks:

Phishing: The user is misguided to fraudulent sources by accessing mails or messages that are similar to the original ones. The credentials of the user are then used for obtaining financial and personal gains.

Malware attacks: user documents and files are held locked and made to be inaccessible for obtaining ransom either in form of financial or personal gains. These are introduced into the systems through Trojan, attachment files, or by unsecured internet access.

Lack of awareness of users: Network security is often compromised due to the lack of training and cyber knowledge possessed by the staff and students of the institution. Unhealthy cyber practices lead to the fragmentation of network security leading to its downfall.

Steps to secure the sector from frequent cyber-attacks include the provision of adequate training to the students and faculties of the institution. Proper authentication of access to the network security must be made and the practice of cyber hygiene should be promoted at all levels.