Art
by
Rebecca Von Tersch
and
Jack Hansen
Ransomware attacks are a growing threat to educational institutions Jack Hansen
of the affected organizations paid the ransom in 2021, a 6% increase from 2020. Additionally, the average cost of ransomware attacks has It’s the day before school starts, and you’re an administrator more than doubled between 2020 and 2021. The price included about to send students their schedules. There’s one massive the ransom itself and the downtime of the service, people’s problem: all the student records, schedules, and teacher time, and missed opportunities. According to the same Sophos communications are encrypted, and the perpetrators demand report, the average cost in 2021 was $1.85 million. $50,000 for their decryption. These upward trends in payout rate and cost mean As inconceivable as it sounds, this happened to the Athens ransomware is increasing in popularity across all sectors, Independent School District in Texas, delaying the start of including the education sector. school by a week and costing the district tens of thousands of In 2020, 44% of educational organizations in Sophos’ report dollars. This is one of many examples of ransomware attacks said they were hit by ransomware attacks, tying retail for the on places such as schools, hospitals, police departments, and highest rates of ransomware. Ransomware attacks are more private companies. likely to succeed against educational organizations than the A ransomware attack is a kind of cyberattack in which average success rate. criminals encrypt the victim’s computer network, making Attacks are also much costlier for the education sector. Even it impossible for them to access. Similar to its physical though the ransom is usually smaller than other sectors, the counterpart, hackers hold the victim’s files hostage until they cleanup is much more expensive. The average ransomware pay a ransom, usually in a cryptocurrency, which is harder to attack costs educational organizations $2.73 million, almost track. 50% more than the cross-sectional average. After getting hacked, the victims have two main options to One possible explanation for this increased cost is weak get their data back. They can try to restore data from backups or pay the ransom. According to Sophos’ State of Ransomware infrastructure. After suffering a ransomware attack, a school 2021 report, the majority of victims who have had their systems district with poor IT infrastructure may rebuild its system. Targeting educational organizations has several advantages. encrypted restored their data from backups. However, 32%
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