The UK's Open University was targeted with over 1 million malicious attacks between January and September 2020, according to figures obtained by think tank Parliament Street following a Freedom of Information (FoI) request.
As reported by Infosecurity Magazine, the data revealed that the Open University in the UK, which offers flexible undergraduate and postgraduate courses for adults of all ages, received an average of 132,368 attacks and spam emails per month over the nine-month period. However, every one of the 1,191,312 malicious emails, which included spam, malware and phishing attacks, were successfully blocked by the Open University’s servers. Specifically, 6,804 emails were blocked due to suspected malware, while 16,452 phishing emails were detected and blocked.
More generally, the outbreak of the global COVID-19 has targeted numerous educational institutions around the world, with malicious actors taking advantage of the new conditions created by distance learning. For example, a study published in September revealed that DDoS attacks against online educational resources are more than three times more prevalent in 2020 than in 2019.
Chris Ross, SVP of Sales at Barracuda Networks, said that the nature of the Open University and the fact that the majority of its courses are currently conducted online, paves the way for cybercriminals to try to target the data stored on servers , which explains the high number of fraud attacks the educational institution is facing. Ross added that phishing attacks are targeting educational institutions around the world at this critical time, with over 3.5 million phishing emails sent to over 1,000 schools and universities from June to September 2020.
Ross stressed, however, that the Open University of the United Kingdom has so far managed to protect itself from a potential breach , while it is important to maintain security standards and constantly update it with the right software and training to keep up with rapidly changing and evolving cyber threats.
Additionally, due to the sensitivity of the information stored on their servers, educational institutions must ensure that all data is backed up to a third-party, encrypted cloud, which will also provide protection from the ever-increasing ransomware attacks targeting schools and universities worldwide, among others.
