PRESS RELEASE

FRISCO, Texas, August 27, 2024 – Netwrix, a provider that provides effective and accessible cybersecurity to every organization, questioned 1,309 IT and security experts worldwide and published today Insights for the education sector based on the data collected.

It shows that 77% of organizations in the education sector have experienced a cyberattack on their infrastructure in the last 12 months, up from 69% in 2023. The most common attack vectors were similar to those in other industries: phishing, user account compromise, and ransomware or other malware attacks.

In the education sector, almost half (47%) of organizations had to incur unplanned expenses to fix security vulnerabilities due to a security incident. In addition, one in seven of these organizations had to pay fines for non-compliance and one in ten reported changes in leadership and lawsuits.

“An incident can reveal security vulnerabilities such as excessive administrative privileges, inactive accounts, weak or unchanged passwords, default passwords or configurations, and unpatched systems due to negligence or lack of knowledge. Fixing a vulnerability may not require additional costs immediately, but it will definitely require time from the IT security team. In other words, fixing the root cause of a security incident requires additional investment, either in the form of money or effort, or both,” says Dirk Schrader, VP of Security Research and Field CISO EMEA at Netwrix.

“After a breach, organizations must prioritize remediation efforts to reduce risks in the future. For example, the immediate response may include patching software on the most critical servers and adding a manual verification step for certain operations. Longer-term remediation efforts may have to wait until the next budget cycle and require additional software, services or personnel,” said Ilia Sotnikov, security strategist at Netwrix.

Learn more about how the education sector can ensure data security Here.

About Netwrix

Netwrix is ​​committed to cybersecurity to ensure a better digital future for every organization. Netwrix’s innovative solutions protect data, identities and infrastructure, reducing both the risk and impact of a breach for more than 13,500 organizations in over 100 countries. Netwrix empowers security professionals to confidently confront digital threats by enabling them to identify and protect sensitive data, and detect, respond to and recover from attacks.

For more information, see netwrix.com.