Is It Time to Review Your Cyber Security?

With the recent rise in cyber attacks and data theft inflicted on schools—including children's SEN information, child passport scans, staff pay scales, and contract details—it is now more important than ever that education establishments protect the large amounts of sensitive and personal data that resides on school servers, or in the cloud. 

While access to this information will often be thought as secure behind usernames and passwords, criminals, who aim to financially capitalise from this crucial data, will be highly sophisticated in their approach and employ very clever tactics to get access to your data.

Keeping your school safe

There are numerous measures that schools can put in place that adhere to Computeams Protect, Defend and Comply concepts; provisions that not only protects the hardware, but staff and their access, as this is an increasingly common way into school systems and their data, via phishing emails and phone calls. 

As part of schools’ Government’s Risk Protection Assessment (RPA) insurance policy clause, annual all staff cyber training is required, which Computeam are addressing as they finalise their online training platform to help schools comply with this extra staff cyber-aware training requirements.

Computeam Secure

To safeguard your school, using our cutting-edge Computeam Secure service, we can ensure your protection is robust and up-to-date, using core strategies such as  anti-virus with in-built ransomware protection, encryption for devices, managed and enterprise-level firewalls, and a comprehensive backup solution. 

With these fundamental measures in place, it’s now time to think about the next stage of security to protect your school and its users against ever-evolving, sophisticated threats. This can include multi-factor authentication on cloud accounts—similar to those found in banking software—as well as next-level email protection to identify and minimise attacks from phishing emails and ensure that all staff are fully cyber aware.

Take advantage of government initiatives

National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is a superb resource for schools to help fully understand cyber threats and how to mitigate their risk. Indeed, this Department of Education initiative has introduced a range of initiatives designed to raise awareness of the cyber security risks that schools face and practical information that will help them protect against those threats.

Review your cyber security

Meanwhile, Computeam cyber audit services provide a comprehensive overview of a school’s cyber standing compared to the national Cyber Essentials scheme, providing vital certification of cyber compliance. The audit produces an overall Cybersecurity score which can be used as a baseline to present to governors and trustees to demonstrate improvement over time. It will also highlight areas of your systems that are not only at risk—but also show where the strengths lie in your school’s procedures and controls. The final report will offer advice, insight, and opportunities to improve compliance with your cyber security systems and policies.

How can we help?

Here at Computeam, we believe in consulting with each school to find a suitable cyber-security solution, balancing policy, risk, and, of course, budget. To that end, our approach goes beyond a mere salve of products and services; we’re committed to starting the discussion and informing you of how to build cyber security into the fabric of your IT and its governance. So, if you’re not sure how safe your school is, then drop us a line and we can have that discussion with you.