While it is well known that schools have long been targeted by cybercriminals, COVID-19 has expanded the traditional cyber threat landscape most K-12 school districts will face going through the Fall of 2020 and into the Spring of 2021.With millions of children now learning from home at least on a part-time basis, they are typically connecting to their lessons using one of four devices: a Chromebook, a Windows laptop, an Apple MacBook, or an Apple iPad.
In today’s remote learning environments, patching takes on additional importance as schools have less control over the IT ecosystem. Students, teachers, and administrators may all be connecting personal devices to school networks, downloading outside software to those devices, using the devices for school, work, and personal tasks, and more frequently using applications that require or are optimized for installation on the device.
Many cyber security incidents start with someone responding to a phishing email or downloading a malicious attachment, such as a Word document or PDF, which, when opened, launches a hidden payload of malware. To help protect against these attacks, IT administrators must ensure that effective antivirus solutions are deployed on students’ devices.