As schools open their doors for a new academic year, it is evident that education is becoming increasingly dependent on technology. As a result, cyber security is a critically important component to the risk management strategies in schools.
Having worked with dozens of schools internationally, COMPASS understands the unique threats they face. Fall is the best time to set the tone for your school’s cyber security posture, here is how:
- Perform a risk assessment of your school’s IT infrastructure to identify critical vulnerabilities and remediate them.
- Segment your network so if one part of your network is compromised, it does not affect the integrity of the rest of your network. For example, put students on a network separate from the faculty and staff.
- Limit the number of privileged users to only administrators with a legitimate need as defined by management protocol.
- Implement quarterly cyber security awareness training. It is important that the faculty as well as the students are cognizant of cyber best practices so they have a strong digital safety background.
- Review all policies to make sure they are current with the technologies and procedures within your organization.
- Conduct a security configuration review of the central image from which all of the faculty devices are copied to provide maximum security.
With a variety of diverse user profiles traversing the network and a treasure trove of sensitive personal and financial information, it is often difficult to balance cyber security in an open learning environment. However, by implementing these cyber security strategies in your school you will greatly reduce your risk of an incident.
For more information on school security, download our Back to School Security Guide. To discuss your school’s unique cyber security posture please, CONTACT US.
