Schools, school districts, colleges, and universities face unique challenges - any disruption keeps students from learning and can impact important before and after school services.
Educational institutions face substantial cyber security threats due to the distinctive security challenges they encounter. Their networks store valuable information, and threat actors recognize the potential to launch attacks against various sub-sectors within the education domain.
School districts have extensive connections with their communities, providing education alongside critical services such as pre / post school care and extended food services for children in need. Universities, on the other hand, grapple with significant turnover in their populations, extensive network sizes, and the necessity for both internal and external user access. What’s at stake for these institutions includes safeguarding student and staff personal information and preventing unauthorized access to less guarded networks that could be used for further attacks.
Beazley Security specializes in assisting educational institutions in identifying and rectifying vulnerabilities, bolstering their defenses, all while ensuring the speed and accessibility of their IT systems. We are also capable of expanding bandwidth to accommodate the growing demands of students and faculty.
Protecting the identities of students and staff, as well as proprietary data such as funded research, are key concerns for education facilities.
We focus on enabling protections and preparations to avoid attacks on our schools, but we’re ready to respond should an attack occur.
Ransomware
A large school district was crippled by a ransomware attack that brought all learning operations to a halt. In addition to potential data loss and privacy infringements, the school district provides important social services to their communities, including before and after school child care and meal services for children in need that were stopped while systems were down. Rapid response and experienced technical services teams were able to document the attack and understand any data loss, unwind the damage, and bring the district back 100%.
Hacking or Data Breach
A university employee’s computer became infected with malware, and the computer contained protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII). Before Beazley Security’s Cyber Services was notified by the university, forensic evidence was wiped in a routine cleanup by IT. The university also retained an off-panel forensics firm which concluded that no information was compromised. The university decided to get a second opinion and Beazley Security’s Cyber Services arranged for a forensics investigation to review documents and salvageable data. With the help of outside counsel, the need to notify and offer credit monitoring to 12,000 individuals was determined.
Unintended Disclosure
A university sent a mailing to nearly 19,000 students regarding university clinic services and inadvertently included Social Security numbers on the address labels. The university was required to notify the affected students. Beazley Security’s Cyber Services team arranged all necessary breach response services including legal counsel, notification and a call center vendor, and credit monitoring.
Beazley Security’s team is communicative, knowledgeable, and easy to work with at any level.
Beazley Security’s team of IT experts are responsive and efficient, providing actionable solutions to enhance our cyber security practices.
Operations were brought to a halt due to ransomware. But with Beazley Security’s help we knew the full extent of the attack and recovered, and in time for the kids to have their holiday parties.
Following a massive ransomware attack, the Beazley Security team worked relentlessly to restore computers, servers, and IT operations to get us back online with patient services.
Beazley Security helped our team navigate through a complex maze of information and data, expertly and knowledgeably advising on cyber security strategy in a practical and understandable manner.