VIEWS & OPINION
Education sector cyber attacks are surging Comment by SAM MANJARRES, Product Marketing Manager at WatchGuard Technologies
Educational institutions have become prime targets for cybercriminals due to the vast amount of sensitive data they handle, including student and employee personal information, research, and intellectual property. With limited t technology budgets and often inadequate vulnerable defences, organisations in the education sector are vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, jeopardising both their reputation and day-to-day operations.
In 2023, the education and research sectors were hit hardest by cyberattacks, recording an alarming weekly average of incidents, according to Statista. A total of 1,780 attacks occurred over the last year, out of which 1,537 were the result of sensitive data breaches, according to Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report (DBIR). This represents a 258% increase in total incidents compared to the previous year and a staggering 546% rise in data breach cases.
In the UK, 27 attacks were reported in just the first quarter of 2024, more than double the number of incidents that were reported in the same quarter in the previous year.
According to a recent survey by the UK’s Ofqual, over a third (34%) of schools and colleges experienced a cyber incident during the last academic year. 20% could not recover immediately, with 4% taking more than half a term to recover.
The DBIR report highlights that approximately 90% of security breaches in the education sector are due to system intrusions, social engineering, and human error. We advise that institutions should follow their practical tips to protect school systems from these cyber threats: 1. Implement measures to secure networks and devices. Keeping software and hardware updated is crucial to protect against known
vulnerabilities. Using content filters and segmenting the network to limit access and contain potential security breaches is also important. Establishing secure passwords policies and managing personal devices (BYOD) are essential. Setting up separate Wi-Fi networks for personal, school and guest devices and mobile device management (MDM) ensures robust protection and compliance with cybersecurity regulations.
2. Cybersecurity Awareness. Educating students and staff about cybersecurity is vital for school protection. Regularly training students and staff, conducting attack simulations, and fostering a security culture promotes shared responsibility. Specific programs for using personal devices and workshops for parents ensure comprehensive protection at school and home.
3. Implement basic cybersecurity tools. Schools should implement continuous monitoring solutions to detect and respond quickly to any suspicious activity on the network and use a VPN to secure off- campus connections. Protecting identities is crucial requiring tools like role-based access, which limits the information available based on responsibilities, and contextual access control, which adjusts security levels based on the user’s location and behaviour. Implementing multi- factor authentication (MFA) is essential as it helps reduce intrusions, social engineering, and human error.
As schools continue to integrate more technology into their daily activities, such as online learning platforms and cloud-based attendance and grading systems, MFA provides an additional layer of protection. By incorporating authentication via mobile app and push notifications, MFA simplifies the access process for students and faculty, significantly reducing reliance on vulnerable passwords. Additionally, centralised management in the cloud allows institutions to maintain complete control over access and configure security policies tailored to their needs.
Embracing or rejecting ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’: a look
at Labour’s unresolved dilemma for curriculum policy Comment by teacher and education researcher MARK HOPKINSON
Both the Labour government from 1997 to 2010 and the Conservatives from 2010 to 2024 had distinctive answers to the question: what is it that children should come to know through compulsory education? In contrast, the current Labour government came into power last year lacking any such distinctive approach. The Tories positioned ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’ as a necessary kick-back against the more skills-based and learner-centric models of the New Labour era. The current government faces a political
dilemma about whether to embrace or move away from the knowledge- rich curriculum agenda that has been at the heart of Conservative education policy over the last 14 years. This question will surely be addressed in the current review of curriculum and assessment led by Professor Becky Francis. David Blunkett’s 2022 Starmer-commissioned set of policy proposals associated the knowledge-rich approach with the narrowing of curriculum, describing it as “highly prescriptive” and a “traditional... passive” approach to school curriculum. Labour has made widening access to music, art and sport a broad political objective, including through school curriculum reform. However, the Labour manifesto contains just a single, non- committal reference to the knowledge-rich agenda, stating an intention to “build on the hard work of teachers and staff across the system who have brought their subjects alive with knowledge-rich syllabuses”. If Labour chooses to move towards a more skills-based approach to curriculum, they face the question of how we define ‘skills’ in a post- ChatGPT world. The New Labour curriculum approach foregrounded the development that occurs within individual learners rather than on the ‘bodies of knowledge’ that schools must get learners to absorb. This can range from ‘spiritual development’ of a young person’s own take on
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questions of moral values to more specific vocational skills. One theoretical and practical difficulty here is having a coherent conception of ‘skills’ that captures the diverse meanings implied by these and other uses of the term. There is a further complication in the context of huge uncertainty about what AI will mean for learning, curriculum and assessment. Amongst those cautioning against a return to a skills-based curriculum are the Headteachers’ Roundtable who have warned against a “rebound from knowledge to a false dichotomy on skills”. Aside from the purely educational question of what is best for young learners’ lives now and in the future, there is a broader political dimension to the choice Labour faces. The skills-based and learner-centric models are part of the cluster of ideas that privilege the subjective side of knowledge (such postmodernism and constructivism) that have in recent years come increasingly under ideological attack. Britain’s ‘strictest headteacher’ Katharine Birbalsingh has recently told anti-postmodern ideologue Jordan Peterson that we should “tell them what to think”, sailing very close to a Grandgrindian view that we should “teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life”. In responding to Becky Francis’ review and recommendations, Labour will likely take stock of the political ramifications of the curriculum policy direction they settle on.
The solution to the government’s quandary may lie in calls simply to drop what has been labelled the “false dichotomy” between knowledge and skills. Indeed, it may be advisable to refuse to deploy any single, overarching label for curriculum, neither adopting the term ‘knowledge-rich’, nor replacing it with an alternative. Apart from the practical and political pitfalls this would avoid, it would have the additional merit of not trying to force all school curriculum outcomes into the same simplistic box. Perhaps it is time for the Department of Education to allow the complex, heterogeneous, school education system to explore what both knowledge and skills mean free from the hindrance of such simplistic reductionist terms.
February 2025
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