ST. LOUIS (KMOX) - Schools are the new favorite target for hackers.
Cyber attacks on educational institutions have ramped up so dramatically, the FBI has recently issued warnings and the Department of Homeland Security is reaching out with new recommendations for schools.
"Ransomware had been prevalent before the pandemic, but it was not at this large a scale," explains Zahid Anwar, Associate Professor at Fontbonne University in St. Louis. Anwar says cybercriminals are hijacking systems and data with ransomware and extorting even more money by threatening to release that data on the dark web.
Anwar says many schools will pay up, "the problem with paying the ransom is that you are encouraging these cybercriminals." He points out, schools maintain large amounts of data, they're often under-resourced in technology, and some students may access systems through personal devices which typically aren't managed by school's security tools.
"Attackers are finding that the big fish, the big companies, that can actually afford to pay large bribes are making their networks more and more resilient to ransomware attacks so schools are increasingly becoming an easy target," he says.
Homeland Security is offering guidance to schools on how to budget for cybersecurity on the front end as well as recommending other ways to secure their networks, including that staff and other network users avoid public wifi, that administrators turn off anything that might allow remote access when it's not being used, that software patches are kept up to date, and that institutions have back-up systems to recover data.
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