School Holidays are over! Back to school the kids go. Well, sort of…

The Easter Bunny has been and for Victorian students, that means it’s time to go back to school! Except due to our current situation, things are a little different.

This term the kids don’t need to get up early and catch the bus, School has moved to a short walk to the study down the hall or even for some kids, the desk in their bedroom! The school environment is a little more relaxed as no need for a school uniform or remembering their homework because it’s all right there next to them but the new routine may also prove incredibly stressful for some. Unfortunately, what hasn’t changed in the current situation is hackers targeting specific groups of people, in fact we’ve seen a spike in suspicious activity, even to our own emails.

With kids going back to school, hackers go back to work.

Data taken from Australian schools across 2018 identified that there were two periods in the year that saw large spikes of cyber activity. One of them is after the Easter break, and what is understood is that Hackers target this period because data starts to really ‘flow’. With mobile phones banned in the classroom of Victorian based Government Schools start Term 1 2020, there was the potential for cyber activity to slow down and reduce the amount of devices connected to the internet during school time but now that we are home, mobile phone usage is off the charts as they have become key for our kids to stay in touch with their friends. The increased activity on their phone, FaceTiming, Zooming, Snapchat, and sending messages to each other also means that hackers can slip in and pretend to be one of their friends sending them an email to discuss school work or even send them a link to a funny meme they saw. As kids try and stay in touch as much as possible, it might be time to give them a quick reminder on the key things to look out for in a suspicious email or message. You can read about the different types of cyber attacks in our series posted earlier on our blog here.

‘Bring Your Own Device’ (BYOD) is also a policy that is making schools and their students more susceptible to cyber attacks as not every device brought in by a student will be as secure as the rest or those owned and provided by the school. With all these extra devices connected to the school resources, there are more connections to target. BYOD also opens up a potential security risk around what the computers bring with them as students connect for the school day. Students or family members sharing the same computer could have been browsing on suspicious websites or downloaded something that had a tag-along the night before and not noticed. This malicious software or virus can then spread a variety of different ways.

Schools can encourage good cyber security practices by encouraging staff and students to change their passwords to something more secure once everyone has settled in to their new routines. This would be especially pertinent for online cloud areas where homework and assessments are being uploaded to ensure that these environments stay secure and no work is jeopardised. Password Policies are great for enforcing this and ensuring complex passwords are being set, and no old passwords are re-used. Also important would be the email portal and any educational subscriptions that may be offered. As always, if remembering passwords is something you struggle with or you know someone who does, try using LastPass to not only remember your passwords but generate secure ones. However, the first line of defence with any online account, as long as it is offered, is always Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Schools use cloud storage such as OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc, and some are using Microsoft Teams for all their collaboration. All of these offer MFA, and should be enabled for all students and teaching staff.

Another good tip to add to any potentially learning from home checklists or tips you may send out to parents and students, include that all computers used for learning should have an up-to-date and regularly scanning anti-virus to keep computers safe and reduce the risk of losing files or a computer to malware. For additional peace of mind, students could take their own back up of their work from their cloud storage account, just in case.

Stay Safe, Stay Home if you can, and remember to take breaks, not just from learning, but from screen time as well!