Security News > 2021 > August > Schools could be ripe for cyberattacks amid ransomware open season
According to a recent Kaspersky report, 41% of parents said their child's school had experienced multiple cyberattacks and 55% said the school had suffered a single incident.
"Threat actors have many motivations but the biggest reason to attack school systems is greed or the desire to profit from the attack by extorting schools via ransomware or the threat of attack," said Bryan K. Fite, global account chief information security officer at BT Global.
Due to the shift to remote learning on short notice, Bartholomew said schools needed to "Create in a matter of months the type of architecture that is usually planned out a year or more in advance." For school systems, perhaps one of the main cybersecurity takeaways from this en masse switch is the regularity of cybercriminal opportunism.
Similar to most other organizations, Bartholomew explained that schools have a "Wide array" of security vulnerabilities, noting that the accelerated switch to remote learning "Provided the criminals more possibilities to gain the required access in."
"A decrease in the amount of schools online may correlate to a lessened risk, but schools should nevertheless be proactive in its security protection strategies," Bartholomew said.
While the prospect of sustained in-person learning may be on shaky ground amid plateauing vaccination rates and surging caseloads, there are proactive strategies schools can implement to protect themselves against cyberattacks as well as contingency plans to hammer out in the event of a breach.