There’s hardly a business in the world that hasn’t faced challenges with remote work during the pandemic, but the issues that universities and K-12 districts have faced have been unique. With students and teachers requiring access to resources for academic continuity, schools have also needed to examine their security practices for remote access. According to a recent report, 2020 was a “record-breaking” year for cybersecurity issues at the K-12 level, with many incidents leading to school closures, millions of dollars in stolen taxpayer money and student data breaches linked to identity theft and credit fraud. Colleges and universities experienced a similar spike, with ransomware attacks doubling from 2019 to 2020 – all while schools report a potential cut to IT budgets.
The result is a wakeup call for the education sector: it’s time to be more targeted and efficient about secure remote access to school resources while also continuing to provide connections to the tools and software that universities and K-12 districts have invested in and that are critical for students to utilize. The security challenges involved with remote student access, coupled with a need for a user-friendly solution that allows students, faculty and staff to utilize resources when off campus, mean that school and university IT departments must consider a number of elements when evaluating the security of their remote access solutions.