5 Ways To Increase Your School Cybersecurity

School cybersecurity and safety are two of the most pressing issues facing schools today. As online threats become more sophisticated and widespread, schools need innovative approaches and strategies to combat them.

But organizations like Blocksi, with a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy governed by best practices, using advanced analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning, can fight cyber threats more effectively and reduce the lifecycle and impact of breaches when they occur.

This article will help you identify critical digital risks facing your school district and provide practical recommendations on how your community can fight back against these threats.

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1. MINIMIZE HUMAN ERROR

One of the biggest reasons for cyberattacks is human error. Unlike machines, humans are not as reliable when dealing with fraudulent emails, shady links, or downloading harmful material. You can combat this by training your employees to discern genuine information from fraud. A couple of ways you can do this include the following:

• Visit and download only from reliable sites; for example, sites that have a valid SSL certificate and sites that have a lot of positive reviews
• Always check the email address of the sender
• Do not open emails that look untrustworthy and contain suspicious text, misspellings, or requests that sound unusual

It would be best to teach your employees about cybersecurity and similar problems. Staff from the boardroom to the shop floor should be aware of the importance of cybersecurity and how to report suspected security events and train your team to spot security related red flags such as spelling mistakes, time pressure, mismatched sender details, fake domain names, etc.

2. PASSWORDS

If you have the same password for all of your accounts and applications, it can seriously impact your internet security. If hackers ever gain access to this password, they can access every other account. In contrast, if you use different passwords everywhere, and one gets leaked, only one of your accounts will be compromised.

A common way for cyberattackers to breach networks is to guess usernames and passwords – particularly if the organization uses cloud services such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google Workspace. Users should be urged not to use common, easy-to-guess passwords and instead use a password manager. Any devices on the network with default passwords should be changed.

3. ENSURE NETWORK SECURITY

Computers, mobile devices, tablets, and other electronic appliances that are connected to corporate networks give access paths to security threats. If the user can access the public resource, a gateway will allow the client to access the resource directly.

Although proxies provide the benefits of anonymity, they lack encryption. Most proxies use SSL certificates for encrypting the data. This isn’t strong enough to prevent today’s attacks, especially from the attacks known as SSL stripping. Hence, when SSL type encryptions are used, the data traveling through the server will be less secure.

Entirely cloud-based, Blocksi technology operates at the browser level, not at the network level, meaning that the risk of an internet security attack is low.

Find out what security measures are included with your software and use them to the fullest extent in conjunction with other security you have in place. Some applications come bundled with their own security features. While it’s still important to implement additional safeguards, vendors know their products and devote significant resources to deliver a safe customer environment.

4. UPDATE YOUR SOFTWARE

Keeping your software up to date is another good way to maintain internet security. A computer with outdated software can be a vulnerability and is prone to hackers searching for any weaknesses that may exist in your system.

Network defenders work to fix network flaws as soon as they are found, but their work relies on updated software using the most recent fixes.

To improve your overall cybersecurity, consider enabling automatic updates for all applications, operating systems, and devices. Update the operating system on your mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. And update your applications – especially the web browsers – on all your devices as well.

Be wary of any software that is not company-wide or on mobile devices. Patches to fix security issues are regularly issued, and not actioning them leaves you wide open.

Up-to-date anti-virus software and firewalls to block unwanted access are essential. It may sound simple, but make sure your workplace WiFi network is secure; ensure that you change the default router password. Adhering to these vital elements of best practice can help secure your business in the long run.

5. BACK UP YOUR DATA FREQUENTLY

In the event of a severe cyberattack, you must have your data backed up to avoid serious downtime, loss of data, and significant financial loss.

If a device is stolen or lost, Blocksi activates a unique anti-theft system that secures devices by activating features like geolocation tracking, remote locking, and data wipe to prevent theft and protect valuable technology resources.

Backups are a vital component to ensuring cyber resilience, and they can play a big role in minimizing disruption in the event of a cyberattack, particularly ransomware or wiper malware. Backups should be made at regular intervals, a copy of the backups should be stored offline, and they should be regularly tested to make sure they work.

Data should be backed up at least once a week. When backing up data, use the same security measures (such as encryption) that you would apply to the original data. Additionally, if your main computer becomes infected, regularly backup sensitive business data to additional disconnected storage devices.

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The ever-changing state of technology and the availability to access almost any information with a few keyboard strokes is beneficial. Still, there are also genuine dangers that accompany it.

The reality is that issues associated with school safety go far beyond conventional boundaries and expectations. Still, it is not all doom and gloom – initiatives are taking place to develop a more comprehensive approach. At this juncture, technology is being considered part of the school safety plan thanks to its ability to improve operational efficiency and the value of the security architecture.

SOURCES:

[1] 4 Things You Can Do To Keep Yourself Cyber Safe

[2] Internet security: What is it, and how can you protect yourself online?