As back-to-school begins, cyber criminals are seeking to capitalise on the short-notice shift back to remote learning driven by the Delta variant, with targeted cyberattacks of schools, universities and research centres who log-in from home using their personal devices.

There were other stark findings in CPR’s research. The global education sector saw a 29% increase in cyberattacks – an average of 1,739 attacks a week in July, compared to first half of 2021.

The UK/Ireland/Isle-of-Man region experienced a 142% increase in weekly cyberattacks targeting the education sector whereas the East Asia region marked a 79% increase.

During the month of July, the education sector experienced the highest volume of cyberattacks compared to other industry sectors that CPR tracks, with an average of 1,739 cyberattacks documented per organisation each week, marking a 29% increase from the first half of 2021.

In more than half of the countries studied by CPR, the education sector is the most attacked, and in 94% of them, it is in the top three most attacked.

On this, Tom Kendrick, EMEA security evangelist at Check Point Software, says: “Cyber criminals are looking to capitalise on this year’s back-to-school season.

“We found that the education sector was attacked significantly more compared to other industries in the month of July. Schools, universities and research centres make for attractive targets to cyber criminals because they are often under resourced from a security perspective.

“The short-notice, on-and-off shift to remote learning exacerbates the security risk. With so many students logging on from their home networks using their personal devices, the current back-to-school season presents a range of new security threats that many aren’t prepared to address.

“Organisations in the education sector should be proactive in their protection strategies. It’s important to constantly change and strengthen your passwords and use technologies that prevent cyber attacks, such as ransomware.”

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Safety tips for academia, staff and students to help avoid cyberattacks

Strengthen passwords
Passwords matter – it is a good idea to review and strengthen passwords that you use for logging onto remote resources, such as email or work applications.

Be phishing-aware
Be wary of clicking on links that look in any way suspicious, and only download content from reliable sources that can be verified.

Remember that phishing schemes are a form of social engineering, so if you receive an email with an unusual request, check the sender’s details carefully to make sure that you are communicating with colleagues, not cybercriminals.

Reduce attack surface
A common approach in information security is to reduce the attack surface. For endpoints, you need to take full control of peripherals, applications, network traffic, and your data.

You need to encrypt data when it is in motion, at rest, and in use. It is also important to make sure you enforce your corporate policies to achieve endpoint security compliance.

Use anti-ransomware
This technology allows you to detect signs of ransomware and uncover running mutations of known and unknown malware families by using behavioural analysis and generic rules.

Contain and remediate
Contain attacks and control damage by detecting and blocking command and control traffic and prevent the lateral movement of malware by isolating infected machines.

You can then remediate and sterilise your environment by restoring encrypted files, quarantining files, kill processes, and sterilising the full attack chain.