VIEWS & OPINION Increasing the Moreton Community School
classroom.With that in mind, we introduced SAMLearning specifically to address the issue of homework, but three
impressed with years on, we’re
outcomes.
the still
Moreton Community School, located a mile north east of Wolverhampton, is a mixed comprehensive that caters for over 700 students. While the school is immensely proud of its examination and curriculum success, when it came to homework, staff were finding that students often weren’t receiving a lot of support beyond the classroom. With that in mind, we introduced SAM Learning specifically to address the issue of homework, but three years on, we’re still impressed with the outcomes.
curriculum success, when it came to homework, staff were finding that students often weren’t receiving a lot of support beyond the
Moreton Community School, located a mile north east of Wolverhampton, is a mixed comprehensive that caters for over 700 students.While the school is immensely proud of its examination and
Moreton Community School
The United Kingdom poses an attractive target for cyber espionage activity due its connections with various financial and economical partners and the sectors it does business in. The UK is a key player on the international political scene making it even more visible to cyber threat actors.
FireEye recently published its regional advanced threat report for EMEA for the second half of 2015, providing an overview of the advanced targeted threats against computer networks in Europe,Middle East and Africa. Focusing on the United Kingdom, we observed that the education sector was targeted on a similar magnitude as the aerospace/defence and energy/utilities sectors (15%, 11%and 14%respectively).
y/
So what might motivate threat actors to compromise the education sector in the United Kingdom, and what could they be after?
higher edu There ar
cation, being a constant target for m e a few reasons in particular why we
like “nation state sponsored” hackers.
Over the past few years we’ve found that anything online really appeals to our tech-savvy students, because they can access it from anywhere, anytime, and in a way that’s familiar and comfortable to them, and SAMLearning is no different.We often give students time to complete some homework tasks during class time, however, if you look at the data for last month alone for example, we can see that 22 per cent was done outside of school hours.While that might not seem incredibl y significant, in my view its 22 per cent more than we ever had when we were setting paper homework tasks.
Over the past few years we’ve found that anything online really appeals to our tech-savvy students, because they can access it from anywhere, anytime, and in a way that’s familiar and comfortable to them, and SAM Learning is no different. We often give students time to complete some homework tasks during class time, however, if you look at the data for last month alone for example, we can see that 22 per cent was done outside of school hours. While that might not seem incredibly significant, in my view its 22 per cent more than we ever had when we were setting paper homework tasks.
Positive results Positive results
To illustrate, I set a paper task last week, and I probably had about 50 per cent of students complete and return it within the set timeframe. But I set an online task today and so far, 84 per cent of my students have already completed it. Also, because it’s mobile and tablet compatible, teachers can quickly and easily check who hasn’t completed any tasks they’ve set. I check my phone as they’re coming into the class and if anything is outstanding, I tell them they have 24 hours to do it, before I start to chase them! That seems to work well! Teaching is also supported by the resource, and as soon as teachers began to see the results, their usage increased. New staff are introduced to it straight away, to show them how it works, and to give them some examples and starting points. In fact, one of our DT teachers runs CPD sessions; he is designing his own tasks and has even shown staff how to incorporate videos so the kids can watch short tutorials before lessons to ensure they’re up-to-date and can answer questions based on it.
Also, because homework and revision tasks are completed online, it means the old ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse is no longer acceptable. Students can’t lose work, or forget it; we’ve got them into a routine of logging in regularly and the password is one they all know, so excuses for not completing work are now fewer and far between. Parents can also login and see what homework has been set, if their child has completed it, how well they have done or if they perhaps need additional support.
Also, because homework and revision tasks are completed online, it means the old ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse is no longer acceptable. Students can’t lose work, or forget it; we’ve got them into a routine of logging in regularly and the password is one they all know, so excuses for not completing work are now fewer and far between. Parents can also login and see what homework has been set, if their child has completed it, how well they have done or if they perhaps need additional support.
I’m certainly a fan; SAM Learning reduces staff workload, and is an effective source of homework and revision that is easy to manage. That’s a win in my book!
Jun e 2016 2016
I’m certainly a fan; SAMLearning reduces staff workload, and is an effective source of homework and revision that is easy to manage. That’s a win in my book!
To illustrate, I set a paper task last week, and I probably had about 50 per cent of students complete and return it within the set timeframe. But I set an online task today and so far, 84 per cent of my students have already completed it. Also, because it’s mobile and tablet compatible, teachers can quickly and easily check who hasn’t completed any tasks they’ve set. I check my phone as they’re coming into the class and if anything is outstanding, I tell them they have 24 hours to do it, before I start to chase them! That seems to work well! Teaching is also supported by the resource, and a s soon a s teachers began to see the results, their usage increased. New staff are introduced to it straight away, to show them how it works, and to give them some examples and starting points. In fact, one of our DT teachers runs CPD sessions; he is designing his own tasks and has even shown staff how to incorporate videos so the kids can watch short tutorials before lessons to ensure they’re up-to-date and can answer questions based on it.
One of the reasons is that traditionally these institutions cannot easily deploy security controls in their
infrastructures.Many universities, for example, cannot enforce security controls on a student-owned laptop, and therefore, defending against threats becomes a complex matter.
The challenge with the semi-open infrastructures typical of many education networks, is that the lack of monitoring also allows threat actors to use the infrastructures as jump stations and exfiltration points. Since these infrastructures typically have a high quality internet connection, threat actors can use this to carry out other types of attacks, as well as use the
infrastructure as a “middle man” when exfiltrating data from a compromise d organisation .
From a threat landscape perspective, we generally observe the following three types of threat actors:
• Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) groups will likely seek to use a university’s network infrastructure as a staging ground from which to launch cyber operations, on the assumption that their activity will appear less suspicious if it originates from a reputable university network. These threat actors may also target educational institutions to gain access to sensitive intellectual property, such as from university research centres, for the purpose of economic espionage.
• Financially motivated threat actors may compromise educational institutions and attempt to steal sensitive personal and financial information fro m students, faculty, and staff.
• Hacktivists could deface and disrupt university websites as a method of protest or to call attention to a certain cause.
Historically we have seen multiple cases of students and universities being targeted by “nation state sponsored” threat actors, either because they participate in government or private enterprise funded research, or because there is a concern that students studying abroad might be criticising their home country.
having the gap betwe It is esse
ntial that these organisations have a procedure to minimise the en the discovery of a threat or breach, and recovery from it.While right technology is an important component in this, it is als o
important to have the right set of information, helping the organisation in prioritising events and potential patches, as well as having context associated with the threats, so they can map out risk. Lastly, automating those tasks associated with threat analysis and information gathering will greatly improve maturity, because it will free up time for the security team to hunt for more advanced threat actors inside the infrastructure, alerts and events.
www. wwweducation-toda
y.co.uk
.co.uk 12 as well as prioritising the
see education, especially ore advanced threat actors ,
quantity and quality of pupils’ homework Comment by STUART CADMAN, assistant head,
Increasing the quantity
ty and quality
of pupils’ homework Comment by STUART CADMAN, assistant head,
Giveme your research!
Comment by
YOGI CHANDIRA Sr SE
Director EMEA, FireEy RAMANI,
e
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