This week is National Cyber Security Career Week, and while most content for it focuses on getting new people into the profession, we're taking a different angle. Cyber security in a school or trust isn't a job for one person or one department; it's a set of responsibilities spread across several roles, each with a different part to play.
Filtering and monitoring sit either side of the same boundary. Filtering is preventative, it stops users reaching illegal, inappropriate, or harmful content before they ever see it. Monitoring is reactive, it watches what's actually happening on your network and devices, so concerning activity doesn't go unnoticed. Together, they're one of the few controls that serve both cyber security and child safeguarding at once.
Day 16 looked at access control from the outside in: securing the connection when staff work beyond school walls. Today we go back to the perimeter itself: the firewall every one of those connections has to pass through, and the network behind it. A firewall that's switched on but never reviewed, or a network where one device can talk to everything else, undoes a lot of the good work covered so far this month. Perimeter and gateway security is less glamorous than ransomware or phishing, but it's the layer that decides whether an intrusion stays contained or spreads.
Every attacker chasing a school network has the same goal once they're in: find an account with more power than it needs. A compromised standard user account is a nuisance. A compromised admin account is a takeover, it can touch every system, every dataset, and every piece of security infrastructure built to stop exactly this. It can probably reset passwords.
Over the past two weeks, we've covered how attackers get in: phishing, deepfakes, ransomware, and what to do when they do. Access control is about the layer that decides whether any of that actually works: even a perfectly crafted phishing email or a stolen password is useless to an attacker if the account behind it is properly protected. Today we look at the single most effective access control measure available, where it still falls short, and what's changing.
The NCSC advises: "there's no way to completely protect your organisation against malware infection." That's not a reason to give up, it's the reason defence-in-depth exists. Instead of relying on one control to stop everything, you build multiple layers, so that if one fails, the next one catches it, and if an attacker does get in, the damage is contained and recovery is fast.
Ransomware headlines tend to focus on big retailers, hospitals, and government agencies. But schools and colleges are an escalating, and in some ways more vulnerable, target, and a recent case shows exactly how indiscriminate the threat is.
A well thought-out plan gives you a structured approach to improving your security posture, identifying weaknesses, and ensuring a rapid response when an incident occurs. The goal is moving from reactive panic to proactive preparedness, and that starts with understanding exactly where you stand today, before building the plan and risk register that gets you further.
Across this series we've covered voice cloning, synthetic video, and AI-crafted phishing, three ways attackers are getting better at looking legitimate. But there's a quieter problem that does just as much damage: people notice something's wrong, and don't say anything.
Phishing remains one of the most prevalent and effective cyberattack methods, tricking millions into compromising their data every year. These deceptive messages, often arriving via email, text message (smishing), or phone call (vishing), are designed to look legitimate. They aim to trick you into revealing sensitive information like login credentials, credit card numbers, or personal data, or to click on malicious links that install malware. They may also be the start of a more complex cyber attack as a way into a system.
Yesterday we looked at voice cloning. Today's threat is more visually convincing : synthetic video. AI-generated footage that can show someone saying or doing something they never did, sometimes convincingly enough to fool the naked eye in real time.
This week, we're turning our Cyber Security Awareness Month series toward one of the fastest-growing threats facing schools and trusts: AI-generated deepfakes, starting with audio and voice cloning scams.
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