How To Prevent And Respond To A School Data Breach

Schools are heavily targeted by hackers aiming to exploit vulnerabilities in their information systems. Schools possess sensitive information: student personal information, academic records, staff health information, financial data, and more. Failing to sufficiently protect this information can have significant financial, reputational, and legal consequences. 

In this article, we’re going to outline the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) framework. This framework acts as a guide to help educational institutions strengthen their cybersecurity posture and effectively respond to data breaches. 

Preventing and responding to a school data breach: Four phases

Solely in downtime, cyberattacks cost education $9.45 billion in 2022. That number increases when you account for the cost of data and systems recovery, legal fees, and damage to institutional reputation. 

Mitigating data breaches requires implementing both prevention and response strategies. Attempted school data breaches are increasing and inevitable, yet schools can reduce their impact through such strategies. NIST released a framework that contains four core phases: 

1. Preparation
2. Detection and analysis
3. Containment, eradication, and recovery
4. Post-incident activity

This framework accounts for both prevention and incident response measures. Let’s take a look into each phase in detail. Additionally, you can find more information on NIST’s framework here. 

Preparation

The preparation phase involves establishing a foundational framework for incident response that aligns with best practices and regulatory standards. Schools should start by developing and maintaining an incident response policy by defining roles, responsibilities, and the decision-making hierarchy during an incident. The policy should delineate clear procedures for addressing various types of incidents, tailored to the school’s specific technological landscape and data sensitivity.

Next, schools need to compile a comprehensive inventory of all IT assets, noting the significance and sensitivity of the staff and student data stored on each asset. This inventory aids in prioritizing asset data protection based on their criticality to the school’s operations. With the assets identified, schools should then implement baseline security measures, including regular updates and patches to all systems, strict access controls, and encryption of sensitive data.

Regarding this phase and the other three, it’s necessary to train both staff and students on how they can best protect sensitive data — with technical education provided where necessary. These should be conducted regularly to ensure all staff and students are aware of potential security breach threats and understand how to prevent and respond to incidents. Simulated attack exercises can also be valuable for testing the effectiveness of current response strategies and identifying areas for improvement.

Detection and Analysis

In the detection and analysis phase, schools need to deploy advanced monitoring tools to continuously watch for signs of unauthorized access or other potential security threats to school systems. This includes the use of cloud monitoring, intrusion detection systems (IDS), system and network logs, and advanced endpoint threat detection technologies.

Schools should implement a robust logging and monitoring system that captures detailed information about school systems and network traffic, user activities, system changes, and access events. This data should be regularly reviewed to detect anomalies that could indicate a security incident. The effectiveness of the detection systems hinges on setting appropriate thresholds and alerts that notify the IT team of suspicious activities in real time.

Moreover, schools should also establish a formal process for event analysis to differentiate between false positives and genuine security incidents. This process should include the escalation procedures for confirmed incidents, ensuring that they are addressed according to their severity.

Containment, Eradication, and Recovery

Once an incident is verified, the immediate priority is to contain the cybersecurity breach to prevent further damage. This may involve isolating affected network segments, disabling compromised user accounts, or blocking malicious communications. Decisions on containment strategies should be guided by an initial impact assessment, which considers the potential damage to school operations and data integrity.

Eradication involves removing the incident’s root cause and any related malware from the system, followed by a thorough sanitization of the affected environments. Schools should then proceed to recover affected systems and data from clean backups, ensuring that no traces of the security threat remain.

The recovery process must be carefully managed to restore normal operations while minimizing the risk of re-infection. This includes verifying the integrity and functionality of systems before reconnecting them to the network.

Post-Incident Activity

The final phase involves analyzing the incident to prevent future occurrences and to improve the overall security posture. This includes conducting a detailed post-mortem analysis to understand how the cybersecurity breach occurred, its breadth, its impacts, and the impacted individuals. The lessons learned should be used to strengthen the incident response plan and remediate gaps in security controls.

Schools should document all aspects of the incident management process — from detection to recovery — for future reference and for compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. Communicating with stakeholders, parents, and students in particular also helps in maintaining trust and transparency. To that point, this communication should be handled sensitively to avoid unnecessary alarm while providing all necessary details about the incident and the steps taken to resolve it.

Responding and preventing cyberattacks with next-generation tools 

Part of the reason schools are disproportionately targeted by hackers is that they generally lack the required budget and in-house expertise to sufficiently strengthen their cybersecurity posture. 

To better prevent data breaches and evolving cyber threats, many schools are adopting next-generation cybersecurity software that offers automated, budget-friendly, and intelligent solutions. These tools are designed to integrate seamlessly with existing systems and provide real-time monitoring and threat detection, helping to close the gap in security expertise.

Moreover, such software complements NIST’s framework by providing the necessary tools and processes to efficiently implement and manage each phase of the incident response lifecycle.

Cloud Monitor by ManagedMethods helps schools to better prevent and respond to data breaches by offering:

• Real-time threat detection: Scans internal and external emails, file sharing, and SaaS applications for phishing and malware threats — automatically quarantining or deleting malicious content.

• Comprehensive data security monitoring: Provides 24/7/365 automatic data security monitoring and risk audits, ensuring continuous visibility over data.

• Centralized dashboard: Offers a central command center dashboard to control anomalous and risky behavior, files, emails, and apps from a single interface — simplifying data management. 

• Customizable policy enforcement: Allows for the creation and enforcement of tailored DLP policies, enabling schools to define how data can be accessed, shared, or deleted based on specific requirements.

• Automated remediation: Automatically handles threats through customizable policy enforcements, such as revoking sharing privileges, suspending user access, and quarantining risky content.

• Behavioral analysis: Detects and analyzes anomalous events that indicate unauthorized access to data. 

• Integrated reporting and compliance: Provides detailed documentation and reporting capabilities to comply with legal and regulatory requirements, helping schools maintain transparency and accountability.

• User-friendly interface: No need for proxies, agents, or extensions, making it easy to deploy and use with minimal training required.

• Enhanced visibility and control: Offers insights into user activities, system changes, and access events, helping schools stay ahead of potential threats, vulnerabilities, and potentially impacted individuals.

And more. These tools help schools to protect staff and student records, and ultimately reduce their damages in a way that doesn’t require extensive overhead or expertise. 

Strengthen your educational institution’s cybersecurity posture with ManagedMethods 

We want to help you document your cyberattack incident response plan. 

We’ve created a free cybersecurity incident response plan template for K-12 schools — set up for easy editing and updating. It covers each of the four phases we covered: Preparation; detection and analysis; containment, eradication, and recovery; and post-incident activity. 

That way, your school can be better prepared to protect the personal data of staff and students. 

Click here to download our K-12 cybersecurity incident response plan template.