The Cyber Resilience Centre for Wales has identified the biggest cyber security vulnerabilities for the country’s schools.
It has outlined the weaknesses in a blogpost that also provides background information on the most common attacks and five tips on how schools can protect themselves.
This comes as the organisation has said that 52% of primary schools and 71% of secondary schools in Wales have identify a breach or attack over the past year.
It pointed to the vulnerabilities arising from: outdated systems and software for which there are no longer security updates; weak passwords; insufficient cyber security training for staff and students; inadequate network security configurations, including insufficient firewalls and intrusion detection systems; and allowing people to use their own devices on school networks without proper security measures in place.
Common threats
These can significantly undermine defences against the most common attacks: phishing, ransomware, malware, distributed denial of service and unauthorised access to sensitive data.
In response the centre has outlined tips for resilience, which include regular cyber security training and awareness programme, strong password policies with regular changes, regular software updates, the use of multi-factor authentication and regular back-ups of critical data.
It also pointed to the free availability of the Police CyberAlarm tool for understanding and monitoring any malicious cyber activity.
