Cyber Security in Schools: It’s No Longer Just an IT Problem

Cyber security used to be seen as something for the IT team to worry about. That is no longer realistic. For a school, a serious cyber incident can interrupt teaching, take down email and MIS systems, affect safeguarding processes, delay payroll, expose confidential information and create days – or even weeks – of disruption. In other words, cyber security is now a leadership, safeguarding and business continuity issue as much as a technical one.

Schools are attractive targets because they hold valuable personal data, depend heavily on digital systems and often have limited time and resources to devote to security. At the same time, staff are busy, pupils use a wide range of devices and cloud services, and technology estates can include equipment bought over many years. That mix creates opportunities for attackers, and many successful incidents still begin with something surprisingly simple: a convincing phishing email, a reused password, an old staff account that was never disabled, an unpatched device or somebody approving an unexpected multi-factor authentication request.

That is why the basics matter so much. Schools do not necessarily need to start with expensive new technology; they need to make sure the fundamentals are in place and, importantly, that they are checked regularly rather than assumed to be working. Multi-factor authentication should be standard for staff, administrators and privileged accounts wherever services support it. Leavers should be removed promptly, shared administrator accounts should be avoided and users should only have the access they genuinely need. Operating systems, browsers, servers, firewalls and applications should remain supported and patched, while unsupported equipment should be visible on the school’s risk register and replacement plan.

Resilience matters just as much as prevention

Even a well-protected school cannot guarantee that an incident will never happen, which is why resilience is so important. Backups need to cover critical information, be protected from the same attack that might affect live systems and, crucially, be tested. A backup that has never been restored is still an unknown. Schools should also know in advance who makes decisions, who contacts external organisations, how communications will be handled and how the school will continue operating if key systems are unavailable.

A useful exercise for senior leaders is to imagine that, at 8am on Monday, nobody can access email, the MIS is unavailable and several staff laptops display a ransomware message. Who gets called first? Can registers still be taken? How will safeguarding information be accessed? Can parents be contacted? Who speaks to the governing body? Who decides whether systems should be shut down? If the answers are unclear, the school has identified a business continuity issue before an attacker has had the chance to find it first.

Staff awareness also remains one of the strongest controls a school can put in place. Short, regular and relevant reminders about phishing, password security and suspicious login requests are usually more effective than a long annual course that everyone clicks through. The aim is not to turn every member of staff into a cyber specialist; it is to help them recognise when something feels wrong and know what to do next.

Cyber security belongs on the leadership agenda

Governors and trustees do not need to understand every technical control, but they should be able to ask sensible questions: What are our biggest cyber risks? When were backups last tested? Is MFA fully deployed? What unsupported equipment do we still rely on? Have we practised our response to a major incident? These are governance questions because the consequences of a failure extend well beyond IT.

A practical next step is to ask your IT provider to carry out a straightforward cyber health check against the Department for Education’s expectations. The output should not be a 60-page technical document that sits in a folder. It should be a short, prioritised action plan showing what is urgent, what should happen next and what can be built into the school’s longer-term IT budget.

The key question for schools is no longer ‘Could we be targeted?’ Any organisation can be. The more useful question is: ‘How difficult are we to compromise, how quickly would we spot a problem, and how well could we recover?’

At One Education, we help schools review cyber risk, strengthen infrastructure, improve resilience and translate technical issues into clear actions for leadership teams and governors.

Please get in touch to find out more about our services.