10 Facts About the State of Cybersecurity Education (and Why That Matters to Your Business)
Why should businesses be concerned with the state of cybersecurity education? Because it brings unexpected risks to the table.
As the world continues to evolve in the wake of the global pandemic, every aspect of life has changed. Students are headed back to school and most will be attending virtually at least some of the time. With many parents still working from home, that means that everyone is sharing a network – and the underwhelming state of cybersecurity education for kids creates unexpected cybersecurity risks for businesses.
Cybersecurity isn’t a priority in most K – 12 curriculums. But cybercriminals have learned that kids are easy targets for social engineering attacks, and schools are generally way behind the curve in internal cybersecurity, creating openings for them to strike.
The Hard Facts About Cybersecurity & Education
Very few resources are expended on cybersecurity education in US schools. Before the pandemic, most school systems had no system in place for distance learning, and cybersecurity education wasn’t a priority – even schools that had adequate funding for technology were more likely to use it for coding or robotics.
- 70% of US K-12 students are participating in part to fulltime distance learning.
- Less than 10% of K – 12 educators surveyed in one study were well versed in cybersecurity.
- Less than 45 percent of K – 12 students receive regular cybersecurity and security awareness education.
- Less than 50% of all of the teachers surveyed say that their or districts offer any cybersecurity education at all.
- About 20% of schools offer no cybersecurity education at all.
- On average, about 40% of schools teach basic digital literacy.
- Cyberbullying is the most frequently taught cybersecurity topic.
- Student knowledge about cybersecurity is lower in public schools, especially in economically challenged areas.
- 100% of surveyed school districts use a firewall and a web content filter but only 3% use cloud security technology to monitor and secure their G Suite and Microsoft 365 environments.
- Less than 10 percent of educators say their students have learned about systems engineering, artificial intelligence, or cyberlaw in the past year.
- Microsoft reported that 61 percent of the nearly 7.7 million enterprise malware encounters reported in June 2020 came from sources in the education sector.
How Can You Protect Your Business From Unanticipated Risk?
Unfortunately the neglected state of cybersecurity education like phishing resistance and security awareness training in schools means that children aren’t likely to be as cautious about cybercrime risks as they should be – and with parents and children sharing networks and devices, that can put a company’s cybersecurity at risk too.
What’s the fastest, easiest, and simplest way to immediately protect company systems and data from danger in this situation? Passly. Our state-of-the-art solution provides 7 essential components to immediately secure your gateways and manage identity and access like:
- Multifactor authentication, with tokens delivered through apps, messaging, text, and more.
- Single Sign-on Launchpads to allow for access to be quickly adjusted or removed in case of compromise
- Dark Web alerts if your protected credentials are exposed
- Full-featured functionality in one cost-effective solution
- Seamless integration with more than 1,000 applications
- Secure identity and access management that goes to work on Day 1
- Protection that rolls out in days, not weeks.
- Are You Prepared to Recover from a Ransomware Attack?
- The 5 Biggest Dark Web Threats Businesses Face Today
- The Week in Breach News: 04/10/24 – 04/16/24
- What’s the Difference Between Pen Testing and Vulnerability Assessment?
- 7 Reasons Why Cybersecurity and Phishing Awareness Training Is a Must-Have for Businesses