Ransomware Recovery for K-12 Schools

K-12 schools are becoming a huge target for hackers.  In fact, there have been 355 cyber security incidents in K-12 schools since January 2016 according to the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center.

Ransomware is currently one of the most popular types of cyber attack and in 2016, 60% of K-12 schools who were attacked with ransomware paid the attackers in attempt to retrieve their stolen data. 

Most schools have ramped up their cyber security measures as a result of increased attacks.  However, even strong security measures cannot guarantee immunity from a cyberattack.  That means that planning for disaster recovery and testing recovery measures is a vital part of keeping your school district safe.

Here are 3 ways that your school can prepare themselves for ransomware recovery:

1. Backups

Make sure all of your sensitive and unique files are backed up, especially if they live on an endpoint.  Those files need to be backed up on a regular basis so if attacked, the school has an up-to-date backup of the lost information.  This would eliminate the need for schools to pay a ransom to recover their files if attacked with ransomware.

2.  Endpoint Recovery

It is also important for schools to be able to rebuilt endpoints that were affected by a ransomware attack.  When K-12 schools are are looking at the disaster recovery plans, they have to consider the recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).  RTO is how long your school district could afford to lose access to any of it systems or data.  RPO is the maximum amount of data your school district could lose.  By keeping these 2 concepts in mind, school districts can create a recovery plan that best suits their needs.

3.  Recovery Service

Disaster recovery is a big task for school IT teams to handle.  Some districts use Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) in order to ensure a fast and simple disaster recovery.  Even companies such as Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform offer these DRaaS services, making it easy for schools to find the right service for them.

Story via EdTech