The education sector has experienced a significant transformation over the last few years, with traditional classrooms expanding into virtual spaces. While this shift has opened up new possibilities and enhanced educational experiences for students and educators, it also exposes educational institutions to more cybersecurity risks.
Ransomware Attacks on the Rise in the Education Sector
Last year, the education sector experienced a staggering 65 individual ransomware attacks, affecting 1,436 schools and as many as 1,074,926 students. These attacks resulted in an estimated cost of $9.45 billion, while individual institutions lost 11.65 days in downtime, on average. The disturbing trend continues in 2023, with 37 confirmed attacks reported in the first half of the year, surpassing the 26 incidents recorded during the same period in 2022.*
The alarming rise in ransomware attacks targeting educational institutions underscores the pressing need for robust campus network security measures. If you’re not taking proactive steps to protect your institution’s network, you leave yourself vulnerable to devastating consequences. This includes data loss, a disrupted learning environment, a tarnished brand image, and, of course, significant financial devastation.
Five ways to safeguard your campus network security
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to fortify campus network security and protect your institution from these emerging risks:
- Implement robust authentication protocols: Ensure strong user authentication measures are in place to verify the identity of individuals accessing the network. Consider implementing multi-factor authentication that requires users to provide multiple forms of verification, such as passwords and biometrics data.
- Regularly update software and firmware: Keep up with the latest patches and security updates to your network devices, operating systems, and applications. Frequent updates radically improve your ability to address dangerous vulnerabilities and protect against potential exploits.
- Use network segmentation: Contain potential breaches and restrict unauthorized movement within your network using network segmentation. This is where you divide your network into smaller, isolated sections. With more granular control over your network, you can reduce your attack surface while enhancing visibility over your entire network security landscape.
- Consider intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) tools: Leverage IDPS technology to monitor network traffic, detect potential threats, and proactively block or mitigate attacks. Offering real-time monitoring, threat analysis, and automated response capabilities, IDPS tools significantly bolster your network’s resilience and protect business continuity.
- Educate and train users: Your network security is only as good as the awareness and actions taken by your users. Hold regular security awareness training sessions for students, faculty, and staff. Teach them about things like phishing scams, password best practices, and the importance of reporting suspicious activities. By fostering a security-conscious culture, users become an active line of defense against cyber threats.
By taking proactive steps to safeguard your campus network, you can establish a robust defense against evolving cyber threats. This allows your organization to provide a secure and uninterrupted educational experience for your students, faculty, and staff.
Not sure where to start? Zunesis can help. With advanced expertise in Aruba Networks’ comprehensive campus network security solutions, our team can help you protect your network infrastructure. We have the expertise to help you maintain a secure environment for your institution and the students you serve.
Security- Top Priority in Today’s World
Security is a hot button in today’s world. Now that the number of remote workers has gone up significantly due to the health crisis, the rise of ransomware attacks has followed closely behind. Remote work environments increase the number of targets for hackers. Phishing attempts are up more than 600% in the last 6 months, exploiting new vulnerabilities in the workforce.
Multiple devices in multiple locations create new opportunities for cyberattacks. With a remote workforce, the chance for unexpected risks increases dramatically. One of those reasons being, employees use “work-arounds” and personal devices when accessing or sharing private data and documents.
There are many avenues to take when considering a heightened and more secure environment. Often, the enterprise infrastructure is not top of mind. Many solutions are available to tighten up an enterprise infrastructure to ensure a more secure environment. These projects are just as imperative when it comes to protecting your company as others.
A number of Zunesis clients have shifted focus from other high priority projects to firewall implementations. This is in an attempt to mitigate the increased security risks.
Firewall
A firewall is a network security system that monitors and controls incoming and outgoing network-traffic. It is based on predetermined security rules. It typically establishes a barrier between a trusted internal network and untrusted external network, such as the Internet.
Depending on the enterprise, a firewall solution can look very different from one company to the next. All entities should be aware of their needs and choose accordingly.
Identifying and deploying a firewall solution specific to the needs of your company is a great place to start. How else can we tighten up an enterprise infrastructure to aid in the security of company information during these cyber wars?
Zunesis Services – Risk Mitigation
Zunesis has assessments available to aid in the risk mitigation of your organization.
Firewall/Network Assessment
Often times, organizations understand the importance of a firewall, and may have even purchased a firewall solution. But, organizations frequently fail to configure said solution correctly or are not using it to its full capability. Zunesis has created an assessment to help your organization with your network security firewall needs.
The Zunesis Firewall Assessment will discover the overall utilization of an organization’s current firewall and their adherence to industry’s best standards. Components of change management and administrative access to the firewall(s) will be examined. Additional focus is made to examine the strength of the existing firewall access control lists (ACLs). Recommendations will be made on how to streamline the firewall rules or leverage additional features to make them more secure.
Ransomware Readiness and Recovery Assessment:
There will be an estimated $6 trillion in damages to business by 2021 from ransomware. The advantage of being prepared, is that you can manage problems quickly and more efficiently by already having a solution ready when a problem ensues. The importance of preparation is that it is a time saver – and time is money!
Intelligent Data Protection is a comprehensive approach to data protection and copy data management. It focuses on how an organization protects and uses its data (now and in the future). Is your organization prepared? What is your backup policy? What is your Disaster Recovery plan?
Zunesis has developed an assessment that documents the readiness of an organization to recover data that may have been impacted by a Ransomware attack. Through review and analysis, a Zunesis engineer will provide observations and recommendations to better prepare your organization for future data attacks.
Recurring Data Center Assessment Services:
If limited resources within your company’s IT department is problematic, maintenance details are often the first thing to slip through the cracks. It is important to stay on top of firmware updates, device OS updates and other customer advisories.
Through RDCAS, we ensure that the most current software and firmware updates are installed across your environment. We work closely with your organization to determine the frequency of your infrastructure review.
The review is limited to the following HPE infrastructure devices including: blades and rack mount servers, HPE Storage, HPE Fibre Channel Switches, HPE Synergy Frame and HPE SimpliVity Hyper-converged platform.
What does the future hold for security innovation and advancements?
The future for security in today’s organizations will still remain a high priority. Here are a few predictions from IT experts.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be a core component of cybersecurity systems
- Cyber warfare threats will be a focus
- The number of hackers will rise
- Developing cybersecurity talent becomes essential
- Legacy technology will continue to be an issue
Zunesis’ commitment is to help moderate problems and issues that arise within the industry. Our goal is to make the lives of our clients better. With risks and threats to businesses on the rise, Zunesis is dedicated to helping our clients prepare for the worst, plan for the best, and manage the present.
I am a huge fan of movies. I love watching them, dissecting them, digging into the “bigger picture”, you name it. One result of this is that I have become adept at picking out actors or actresses and their roles in some of my favorite movies. Now this is not very difficult to spot, when masters like Meryl Streep or Daniel Day Lewis, play a character. I mean it is usually called out on the marquee when a movie hits the theaters. Who I love to find are “those” guys and gals, ones that always seem to be showing up and making a serious impact in the movies you watch. One of my favorite current actors is Karl Urban. He is a New Zealand actor who has a career stretched over decades, rarely in the lead role, but again always making an impact. He was in varied movies from epics like The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, to kids movies like Pete’s Dragon, to recent blockbusters like Thor: Ragnarock. Every time he graces the screen, I feel that he is the security blanket that holds the scene together. Almost unnoticed, until he is missing. Now you are probably asking, I came here to read a technology blog, why are you rambling on about a movie actor? Well, besides being a shameless plug for an actor who I think should get more publicity, I am using this example as an analogy for what I feel is the forgotten “glue” in your IT infrastructure.
We live in a digital age where you have amazing computing power in the palm of your hand, but what is still there in every major office you walk into?
Hard copies of important documents, or in other words, paper. Lots and lots of paper. We, as a society, are trying to back off the use of paper and trying to be more eco-conscious, but the need for hard copies still persists. Printers still dot our IT landscapes, from the smallest basement offices to the largest “corner” office. They are there in the background, quietly (sometimes not so quietly) working away and making a difference in our daily jobs. They go somewhat unnoticed, until they are not around or not working (for the Office Space fans the term “PC Load Letter” comes to mind).
Unfortunately, there is one major way that your printers can be noticed, and it is through network security attacks. It is the solvent that will dissolve the glue and leave your infrastructure vulnerable. We here at Zunesis have not forgotten about this IT bit player, and we strive to help our customers find the best performer possible. One that will do the basics, but also give you peace of mind, so that you can rest easy at night. Like my friend Mr. Urban, a product that leaves an impact, without you even realizing it. Call us today to talk over the printing landscapes, and the wonderful security they provide!”
