Education institutions at risk for cyberattack

Just a short reminder to ask and beg:  Please do be very careful of emails and clicking on links in them.  Phishing attacks are a very real threat to the security of the college.  

If interested in some details, please see below for a very interesting recent article and national radio news story on one threat that targeted schools in Montana, including one community college there.

Click here:  Schools have become the latest target of cyberattacks

(Marketplace Weekend radio article Oct 13)

My snips:

• An entire school district in Flathead Valley, Montana, shut down .... More than 30 schools and a community college closed for three days, affecting over 17,500 students.
• But they're not alone. Schools in Texas, Iowa and Alabama also say they have been hacked.
• Why target a school?
• "They just sit on a wealth of information," said Michael Kaiser, executive director at National Cyber Security Alliance. "If you think of what a school has about the students, the parents, the teachers. It's an incredible amount of data which is incredibly valuable to cyber criminals."
• Often hackers send out wide phishing scams. All it may take is for someone to click on a link.