As the start of the new academic year approaches, university and college teams responsible for cyber security will be doing everything they can to ensure the new intake of fresh student faces doesn’t increase the risk of an attack.
This won’t come as a surprise if you’re close to the education sector. From attacks during key stages of the academic year, to cyber gangs targeting highly prized research - the sector has been increasingly targeted by cyber crime in recent years. Results from this year’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey reveal that 88% of further education colleges and 92% of higher education institutions identified breaches or attacks in 2022.
So whether your teams are carrying out cyber security risk assessments or penetration testing, or updating policies, business continuity and incident response plans ahead of the start of term - all part of the essential toolkit to fight and protect institutions against cyber crime - we all need to look at what higher and further education institutions can do to strengthen their defences.
We have some ideas that will help.
Focus on your students
90% of cyber security incidents are the result of human error. If you’ve been here before you know that we talk about this statistic a lot.
The reality is that we, the end users, are making these mistakes - clicking on the wrong things, downloading the wrong attachments, and giving away the wrong information - because we simply don’t know enough about how to keep ourselves and our organisations safe. We don’t know how to spot the signs of cyber crime, about the psychology of social engineering, or the ways in which we put our devices at risk.
Addressing this skills gap among students is vital for any higher or further education institution looking at ways to improve their cyber security defences.
Find the right messages and tone
Engaging students with any topic can be difficult, but especially cyber security. It’s often a dry, tech-heavy subject, which features a lot of scare-mongering. Simply put, rather than springing people into positive action, talking about cyber security can have the opposite effect.
Sharing the right messages for the student audience, and speaking their language, is key to piquing interest and increasing engagement. For example,
sharing key information in bite-sized chunks
using visual communications where possible, and
focusing on sharing the ways that cyber crime can directly and indirectly affect their personal lives and studies.
These are just some of the proven techniques that can help students make sense of cyber security.
The solution
CyberSafe, our cyber safety communications and behaviour change programme, contains everything your students need to know to keep themselves and your institution safe from cyber attacks.
It’s completely on-message, with
vibrant videos
engaging intranet content
eye catching digital signage
interesting social media posts and videos
well-written communications material for all your student channels
and much more!
We can help you make that difference as we support your institution to make your students cyber-savvy, with lasting effects.
We’d love to show you everything CyberSafe has to offer. Want a free demo? Get in touch hello@insideoutconsulting.co.uk.