10 Statistics About Cyber Crime In Education
In a learning environment, technology can be a teacher’s greatest ally or worst nightmare. Whilst advances in computing, access to international resources and fast-growing innovation in learning tools make classrooms the perfect place for children to learn, they’re also a hub for cyber-threats.
Pupils are just one click away from a world of inappropriate content, making it challenging for educators to balance the benefits of online learning tools and resources, whilst also maintaining adequate controls for a safe learning environment.
Unlike business environments, the education sector must take a fundamentally different approach to IT infrastructure, as its networks are primarily accessed by children, who are simply unaware of cyber-threats and the dangers they pose. Subsequently, they are much more likely to have a passive attitude to the steps and remediations needed to mitigate risk.
In many cases, this means that your school’s IT strategies have to be more robust, requiring a focused cybersecurity approach that many teachers and IT leaders in the education sector don’t have time for.
- The education sector experienced a 44% increase in cyber attacks last year.
- 83% of UK schools had experienced at least one cyber security incident even though 98% of schools used antivirus software and 99% had some sort of firewall protection.
- Of those suffering a cyber attack, 71% of users downloaded the malware.
- 82% of schools state data loss as the biggest concern with cyber crime, followed by remediation costs (47%) and reputational damage (37%).
- Earlier this year, 14 UK Schools have been hit by cyber attacks from the notorious hacking group known as “Vice Society”. These cyber attacks have caused roughly 500GB of confidential data to be leaked to the public.
- Only 44% of schools included core IT services in their risk register.
- 43% of universities have had exam results infiltrated
- 25% of universities admit to having highly confidential “critical intellectual property” data infiltrated, including national defence, social, economic & medical research.
- 64% of IT professionals don’t believe their current security measure would be sufficient to deal with attacks
- 97% of schools said that losing access to network-connected IT services would cause considerable disruption.
