A scam targeting schools in the US could land in Ireland with the return of the academic year, Irish cyber experts are warning.
The recently reported cyberattacks have been fixed on Tenafly Public Schools in the US, where scammers are hacking into online systems to gather confidential information on students.
Galway-based Anti-Phishing Platform SpamTitan has warned that many of the attacks seen in Ireland have come from overseas, and so schools need to be on high alert.
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An employee at a New Jersey-based Tenafly school fell victim to a phishing email and allowed the ransomware to install across the network - allowing criminals access to student information.
As with many ransomware attacks, law enforcement is involved in the investigation with the FBI currently looking into the Tenafly attack. However, given that the origin of these scams is hard to find, arrests are even more difficult to come by.
SpamTitan is advising people that most ransomware starts with a phishing email that contains a link to an attacker-controlled host where the ransomware can be downloaded, or the targeted user will be convinced to open a script file that then downloads malware.
Ronan Kavanagh from SpamTitan said: “Irish schools usually do not have the readily available funds of a large-scale business, but they also lack the enterprise-level cybersecurity, which makes them a good target for ransomware attackers. Because public schools run on strict budgets, they often don’t have the funds to build advanced cybersecurity infrastructure.
“When you hear about ransomware, you usually hear about an enterprise business losing access to data, but ransomware attackers will target any private or public entity with enough funds to pay the ransom.
Ronan added: “In the latest ransomware incident, cyber-criminals shut down an entire New Jersey public school district. This isn’t only a hindrance for the school, but also can pose a serious risk to the student's personal information.”
Even with a limited budget, schools can still take the necessary steps to stop ransomware - the most important and cost-effective of which is installing email security on all email servers.
Because ransomware starts with a phishing email, the most effective way to stop it is to block malicious email messages from reaching a user’s inbox.
Here are some other key tips to prevent cyber attacks:
- Training employees on how to identify a phishing email is also helpful, but it leaves the organization open to human error.
- Set up and maintain an approved method for remote access, grant permissions to any user who should be able to connect remotely, and then ensure your company policy prohibits other methods.
- Use a multi-layered email protection approach: don’t rely only on your mail servers filtering capabilities, also add a third-party dedicated solution to filter your mail.
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