More than half of Britain's universities have reported violations

Redscan has released one research concerning issues security faced by higher education institutions. As the research revealed, more than half universities of the United Kingdom, reported data breaches in ICO during the last year.

In accordance with United Kingdom National Cyber ​​Security Center (NCSC), universities become targets of malicious agents both for financial gain and for the interception of intellectual property. The Redscan report also points out that it is worrying that educational institutions are not taking appropriate measures to protection especially at this time when many lessons are done remotely due to the coronavirus.

The defense against an uninterrupted flow of electronic attacks Phishing remains a challenge for all universities. Several institutions have reported receiving millions of malicious messages each year, with one reporting that they have reached 130 million. Attempts at e-fishing have been described as "endless" and one university has revealed that attacks had increased by 50% since 2019.

Other key findings of the report include:

• 54% of universities have reported data breaches to the ICO in the last 12 months
• A quarter of universities have not performed penetration tests in the last year
• 46% of all university staff in the UK have not received security training in the last year.
• Universities spend an average of 7.529 0 ασφαλείας per year on security education, with costs ranging from £ 49.000 to .XNUMX XNUMX £
• Universities employ, on average, three qualified cyber security professionals
• 51% of universities actively provide education and safety information to students
• 12% of universities do not offer any security instructions, support or education to students
• 66 of the 134 universities are certified Cyber ​​Essentials ή Cyber ​​Essential Plus

Redscan CTO Mark Nicholls commented: "The fact that such a large number of universities do not provide cyber education to staff and students, nor do they conduct penetration tests independently is worrying. "These are the basic elements of any security program and the key to preventing data breaches."

"The threat to universities from government aggressors makes the need for improvement even more critical. The cost of failing to protect a scientific research is enormous. "