California Schools Attacked by Cyber Extortionists. How Can You Protect Yourself?

Teachers are in despair and panic. In Santa Clarita, which is not far from Los Angeles, schools with 6,000 children in total, simultaneously underwent cyberattacks. Hackers used ransomware. All teachers had to immediately log out of the system so as not to disrupt the learning process, and come up with some educational activities on the spot.

These attacks on school online systems are becoming more and more frequent.

With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic many schools went online and cyber-criminals began to use these circumstances.

Servers of educational establishments get blocked and hackers extort ransom from their victims. As a result, the whole learning process is paralyzed.

Within the last five years such attacks with the use of ransomware have happened in over 20 educational establishments in California.

Experts warn about the rising number of attacks all over the country, and teachers demand that school cybersecurity is made a priority. According to Emsisoft data, in 2020 cyber-criminals attacked over 1,800 schools and universities all over the country, whereas in 2019 there were only under 100 attacks.

Cybersecurity in schools must include:

- Installation of anti-phishing solutions

- Content-filtering to control visits to dangerous or shocking websites

- Timely updates ofantivirus and other software aimed at blocking threats

- Using only trusted external drives