Myerscough College hit by cyber attack on exam results day

Myerscough College has suffered a significant malicious cyber-attack, meaning students could not access their GCSE and other exam results online. Online enrolment was also affected following the attack on Thursday.

In response Matt Aldridge, Principal Solutions Architect, Webroot said:

“Unfortunately, the education sector is a common target for cybercriminals throughout Covid-19 and is struggling to get to grips with the subject of cybersecurity. Criminals are targeting providers due to a perceived weakness in their cybersecurity, as well as the value in their data. Fortunately in this case it seems that there hasn’t been a breach of student data yet but other institutions should take this case as a wake-up call to address their data security and privacy compliance quickly, if they haven’t already.

“As the education sector is a huge pool of sensitive data, companies within it need to engage cyber-resilience plans to protect the company’s IT infrastructure and data regardless of the crisis. Also, staff training is essential for defending against phishing attacks and business email compromise. The training materials used also need to be updated continuously to reflect the latest threat trends, and regular simulations should be run to ensure that the training has the desired effect.”