Keep vigilant in the face of Cyber threats!

It appears impossible to read the news at the moment without hearing about another IT security breach. In the fortnight leading up to the time of writing, there have been reports of hacks at Uber, Imgur and a private members club whose clientele includes Stephen Fry.

Some reports suggest that cyber-attacks more than doubled in 2017. These include well publicised attacks such as the WannaCry ransomware attack that affected the NHS earlier in the year. Ransomware (a form of malware which locks files on your computer and will only unlock them in exchange for money) is a particular area of growth in cyber-attacks. In fact, more than 4,000 ransomware attacks have occurred every day since the beginning of 2016 (a 300% increase over 2015) and the proportion of phishing emails that contain a form of ransomware grew to 97.25% in 2016.

With so many attacks making the news, you may be concerned about the of cyber security threat to your Independent School. As a school with a duty of care to hundreds of pupils, it is extremely important that cyber security is tight. With so many schools keeping personal data on staff, pupils and parents as part of day-to-day operations, the consequences of losing sensitive material do not bear thinking about – particularly with the danger of steep fines under the GDPR legislation coming into force next May.

Although some Independent Schools have a dedicated ICT team, with engineers that protect and improve their networks, many don’t. For those that don’t, what practical steps can staff take to ensure that your school is as protected as possible

Patch Tuesday

Have you ever heard of Patch Tuesday? If you are not familiar with ICT, then chances are you have not. Patch Tuesday is an unofficial term referring to when Microsoft regularly releases patches for its software products. This is the second (and sometimes fourth) Tuesday of each month.

Every Patch Tuesday Microsoft releases a large number of updates for its Windows desktop and server software. These updates make UI (user interface) tweaks, performance improvements and security patches to Windows software.

If you are unfamiliar with Patch Tuesday, then chances are your desktops and servers aren’t getting the patches they need. By keeping on top of the updates, you can ensure that your hardware and software is up to date, and therefore protected from cyber security vulnerabilities

Education and Acceptable Use Policies

Whilst it is true that most Independent Schools have an ICT ‘Acceptable Use Policy’, it is also true that many pupils and staff have limited knowledge of it and limited knowledge of how they can stay on the correct side of it. In order for cyber security to work in a school environment, staff and pupils alike must understand why it is important to be safe online.

This must not just be in the context of the school, but also of the individual. Pupils are unlikely to be moved to stay safe online if they feel the only consequence of their actions is the school getting fined. By educating pupils of the dangers to them of poor judgement online, such as ransomware locking their valuable files or phishing emails stealing bank details, they are far more likely to take cyber security seriously.

By agreeing a fair ICT Acceptable Use Policy, educating pupils and staff on the details and rigorously enforcing it, you can make great progress in your school towards a safer cyber environment.

Contingency planning

Even if you feel that your cyber defences are relatively strong, a determined intruder is difficult to keep out. Schools have vast stores of personal data and Independent Schools in particular have data on high income individuals – this makes them targets for cyber-crime.

Therefore, it is important to have a plan in place should a cyber-attack occur. Under the GDPR legislation, all organisations experiencing a cyber-breach must notify the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) within 72-hours of the nature of the breach, what was stolen, and the measures you are taking to reduce the damage. To comply with this requirement, your school will need an individual that has at least a basic understanding of cyber security to liaise with the ICO directly.

You will also need a strong backup approach in place. It is preferable that you backup every day to a cloud server or an external drive. Once the backup is completed, removing the external drive from your servers and storing it securely will prevent the backups from also being infected. Furthermore, perform tests of your backups to ensure that they work and to give you a rough idea of how quickly you can restore your infrastructure from a backup. If your tests indicate that your backups take too long to restore, you may wish to look for better options.

Removable Media Controls

Many people still use USB thumb drives or external hard drives to store and transport files. However, removable storage media is an extremely unsafe way to manage file transfers. Thumb drives in particular are easy to lose and when pupils and staff can use personal thumb drives to move files around, you have little control over what files they are removing from the school premises, or indeed what files they are bringing in to the school network.

If a pupil or staff member were to bring in a thumb drive from home that had a malicious file on it, that file would have the potential to infect the whole school network.

Ensure that removable media is encrypted and scanned for malware before importing files onto the school network. Many businesses have even banned removable media entirely. A cloud option, particularly one that is built from the ground up with security in mind, such as Citrix ShareFile, is in my opinion by far the safest way to store and share documents.

Be Vigilant

It is not easy to keep on top of cyber security. However, it is so important to understand and to mitigate the risks. By putting the advice listed above into action you will not be completely protected from cyber threats, but you will have a strong foundation of security.

If any school would like further information or consultancy on ways in which they can protect themselves, or ways in which they can reach GDPR compliance next May, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at schools@entrustit.co.uk or 0330 002 0045.

When it comes to your Network, Expect the Unexpected!

With Independent Schools becoming increasingly reliant on technology for delivering lessons and running the administrative side of the school, network reliability and resilience is one of the hot topics that I often get asked about by the schools we work with.

While many Independent Schools enjoy stunning countryside locations, there can be some pitfalls in terms of technology! Over the years, most schools have bitten the bullet with the "excess construction charges" that BT and similar organisations levy to connect these locations to the Internet. But many schools still suffer from Internet reliability issues. I noticed in the press just this week that Myddelton School which has just opened in North Wales enjoyed a challenging first few days when their Internet circuit was severed, and I know many other schools have been in the same boat over the years, when something as simple as a bad storm took down overhead cables, resulting in a lengthy Internet outage.

And when it's not the great British weather causing havoc, it can be the local wildlife creating chaos, as one school I spoke to recently had found to their detriment. They first became aware of a problem when one building could no longer connect to the network. After much troubleshooting, it was discovered that a local rodent had nibbled through the fibre-optic cable that ran between two buildings!

And of course power problems have been a common cause of downtime for many schools over the years.

Coming from a business background, where there has been a reliance on 'always on' ICT for some years now, I am well versed in ways to overcome these challenges, so I thought it would be useful to share a few pointers:-

1. Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) equipment is important, not only to protect your servers but also other connectivity equipment such as Internet routers, firewall, network switches and Wi-Fi access points. Just having a UPS isn't enough though, it is important that they are sized correctly to provide an adequate run-time in the event of a power outage and that they are tested periodically and batteries replaced when indicated.
2. Some resilience can be built into Internet connectivity by having a backup line – where practicable routed differently from the main line – which will provide a failover in the event of the main line experiencing an outage. Again, just having a backup line is not enough though, as there are some technical intricacies involved in swapping from one line to another, therefore the firewall or router needs to appropriately pre-configured to enable a seamless switchover to take place. We are currently implementing solutions for many of our customers around this technology, and the good thing is that with ever-falling Internet connectivity prices, in some cases we've been able to provide them with a new main line and a backup line for a similar cost to their current main line only.
3. Inter-building connectivity can be made more robust by undergrounding cables where possible and providing diversely routed connections between buildings so that there is more than one route by which network traffic can travel between building A and building B.
4. In terms of server hardware, it tends to be the components that contain moving parts - things like power supplies and disk drives - that are most prone to a failure, so it's important that equipment has redundant power supplies and redundant arrays of disk drives. Or of course you could consider migrating to the cloud to negate the need for in-house servers at all – but that’s a big topic for another day!
5. Server monitoring software can also provide a valuable insight into the health of the network, allowing problems to be addressed proactively before they cause disruptive downtime. I would caution though, that it is vital this type of software is configured correctly, as there is a tendency for it either to over-alert and cry wolf too often, in which case real problems can be overlooked, or to under-alert resulting in vital problems being missed.

In future articles I will be discussing more ways of ensuring your ICT is “always on”, but if in the meantime you need any help or advice around making your network more resilient, then please do not hesitate to contact me on 0330-002-0045 or email schools@entrustit.co.uk