Why back to school poses a threat to data security

Every September, we remember that Alice Cooper was wrong. School is not, in fact, out forever. With shortening daylight hours and cooling temperatures comes, inevitably, a return to classes. And that’s bad news for cybersecurity.

Yes, really. If you think your children bring home a lot of physical viruses in the weeks after school starts, imagine what computer viruses they’re bringing home on their phones and computers.

Children and schools alike are now major targets for cyberattackers, in part because kids act impulsively, pay little attention to what they’re doing online and don’t always follow rules. Worse yet, many schools just can’t protect data effectively.

Schools are often underfunded and lack adequate cybersecurity. Experts say that almost one-third of all U.S. school districts had been breached as of 2021.  

Cyberattackers target educational institutions because they know schools have both valuable data and weak cybersecurity. That makes your kids’ schools a virtual petri dish for malware. If they’re on devices on an unsecure Wi-Fi network at school, your kids are just collecting malicious software to bring home. 

And it’s not just your personal data or your kids’ data that’s at stake. Malware can make the jump from your child’s device to your business network faster than children bolting out the door after the final bell rings.

Ransomware creators know that a child’s data is valuable to parents, so they’re stealing it. Some of the data is extremely sensitive, including medical information. Of course, the consequences for students and parents alike are serious when attackers release their data to the public, which some have released after not receiving a ransom.

It's not just tweens and teens who are targets, either. One researcher found malware on a tablet made for younger children. The tablet posed a threat serious enough that Walmart pulled it from its online store.

And it doesn’t help that kids are on screens all the time. Boston Consulting Group found that 44% of them are online between three and five hours every day, and 8% of them are “always” online.

At school, your kids are likely to use both personal and often minimally protected school-provided devices. Caught up in a social frenzy, they open new accounts, share all kinds of data on multiple platforms and download new games. As a result, all the elements are in place for a cyberattacker to pounce on your data.

Video games make for a good example. Gamers have been targets of cyberattacks for a while, in part because they tend to make decisions quickly, furiously and without calculating the consequences of their actions. Children are generally more likely to exhibit that behavior than adults and might not be versed in internet safety.

But it’s not just games that pose a threat to cybersecurity. Even common search terms aimed at children are really just malware traps. Security Hero recently found that results for two-thirds of the most common pop-culture search terms can infect children’s devices with malware. Need a scary, real-world example? Almost 80% of search results for “Taylor Swift” are potentially contaminated websites.

Attackers know they can get to your corporate data through your kids. Remote work and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies provide the link from a kid’s device to your employer’s network. If your kids use your personal device for their own purposes and you use it for work (a very bad idea, but you might not know it’s happening), your personal and work data are at risk.

You can help protect your data by installing a VPN on your kids’ devices. (Let’s hope they use it.) You can also set up a wireless network for your children separate from the one you use for work. You’re probably monitoring your kids’ online activity, which is just a good practice in general.

But even VPNs and secure home wireless networks can be vulnerable. Once attackers enter a device, they can hijack a VPN or browser session, or steal work credentials stored on a personal computer. Those tactics enable them to jump from a kid’s device to your corporate network via your personal device.

Of course, one of the best ways to protect yourself and your business from cyberthreats is to have security in place that takes care of data protection, backup, recovery and anti-malware. With Acronis True Image, you have all those capabilities in one product.

You can stop data breaches at home, school and work before they happen. You can also fill in the gaps that inadequate school cybersecurity protections leave wide open and protect your personal and corporate networks from malware that kids pick up at school.

When school is in, your data is at risk, and your networks will be particularly vulnerable as your kids return to class. It’s important to know the risks and do all you can to keep your data safe.