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Half Of US Schools Have Battled IT Breaches
SecurityProNews
Staff Writer
2009-05-19
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In the past year, 55 percent of US K-12 school districts experienced some sort of IT breach, including unauthorized user access, hacking, or viruses, making cyber breaches nearly as prevalent as physical breaches; 67 percent reported break-ins, unauthorized building access or vandalism.
 | | Half Of US Schools Have Battled IT Breaches |  |
The statistics are courtesy of CDW Government, Inc.'s the 2009 School Safety Index.
The vast majority of IT breaches unsurprisingly originated internally: 41 percent of the time, they were hacked by students, and 22 percent by parents and teachers. Despite that, three-quarters of the districts surveyed (out of 400 total) believed their networks were adequately secure.
One might say the first step to solving the problem is admitting you have one. Those admitting things could be improved cite the usual woes facing schools: lack of budget, staff, and tools to accomplish improvement, barriers districts have cited for three straight years.
Network security will only become an increasing concern in the future. Eighty-eight percent of the school districts surveyed offer wireless networks, and a 92 percent of those with wireless networks are using some type of encryption. About two-thirds of schools currently without wireless networks plan to activate one within the next year.
While encryption is good, CDW-G discovered there could be a problem with how school networks are monitored. Only 40 percent said they actively enforce policies governing how school networks are used, and the same percentage said they spend just four hours or less per month reviewing questionable internet activities.
With increased network monitoring, the number of IT breaches could be considerably reduced.
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SecurityProNews is a daily online and email publication focusing on internet security issues.
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