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October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.
Awareness Day Eight: How can your school prevent Ransomware attacks?

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.
Awareness Day Seven: What does a Ransomware attack on a school look like?

Moving MIS is a daunting task and is no small undertaking for a school. Moving to the cloud from a legacy system means that there are cyber security benefits but may be something new to your organisation. There is often the assumption that the new MIS porvider will seamlessly migrate the data for you, however there is a considerable amount of work that the school must do beforehand in order to make this happen.  This article provides some practical guidance and considerations.

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.
Awareness Day Six: Cyber Action Plan

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.
Awareness Day Five: Responsibilities

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.
Awareness Day Four: What to do if you suffer a cyber attack

October is Cyber Security  Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.
Awareness Day Three: Data Security

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.
Awareness Day Two: Privacy Protection.

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, and while we don't think that cyber Security  awareness is something to cover just once in the year, we think it's a good opportunity to publish some information that can be used all year round.

We previously reported on some schools that had sufferred ransomware attacks, namely Thomas Hardye in Dorset.  It has since been discovered the attack was by the hacker group that goes by the name "Rhysida".  
The attack methodology used was by exploiting a known vulnerability in PaperCut.  Other schools have reportedly suffered the same attack from the group.

Computing Magazine recently reported about the ICO reprimanding seven organisation for domestic abuse breaches in the last 14 months.  A collection of public bodies, charitable organisations, law enforcers and lawyers have made personal data slips when handling domestic abuse cases in the last year, showig abusers where to find their victim is hiding.

Here's a little-used function on the Knowledge Bank.

Did you know that you can record offline training events? For example group face-to-face training sessions? Here's how.

As we have seen an increase in the number of cyber attacks on schools we wanted to highlight a white paper that has been produced by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), part of GCHQ and the National Crime Agencey (NCA).  The UK is currently a high value target for cyber criminals, not just in terms of business but against the UK citizens as well.

The ICO have published a 10 step guide to sharing information to safeguard children or young people from physical, emotional or mental harm. 

The new guidance addresses concerns from organisations and frontline workers that may be scared to share information for fear of falling foul of data protection law.

A number of schools have recently been victims of cyber attacks, some of whom we have been working with to determine the extent of the data breaches. 

The current attacks seem to be directed at secondary schools causingsome to close for a week or work on reduced hours, while systems and data are recovered.

We wanted to highlight an organisation called the National Cyber Resilience Centre Group which consists of nine regional centres in the UK that were set up to strenghten the reach of cyber resilience across the business community.

A coalitiion of police, government, large employers and organisations and academia are supporting the growth of the Cyber Resilience Centre Network.

We've put all the specific school and trust related data protection guides, documents and queries into one area to make it easier for you.

As data protection is closely linked to cyber security the section covers guidance for raising staff awareness with cyber security and other guidance.

The ICO has recently published new guidance about bulk email communications following a number of data breaches caused by the incorrect usage of CC and BCC (carbon copy and blind carbon copy). 

Emails sent to the wrong person or emails copied rather than blind copied to customers/parents are the most common data breaches seen and are often because someone is rushing or under pressure.

The time following a cyber attack can be very stressful, and in the heat of the moment it can be difficult to know what the best thing to do between working out what went wrong, how to recover and what went missing, it can be hard to know where to start first.

We provide some help and guidance in our Information and Cyber Security Best Practice Area, which also includes the checklist:  document What to do immediately after a Cyber Attack (58 KB) .

We've created a model Social Media Policy.  The policy outlines guidelines and expectations for the use of social media platforms by individuals and employees associated with an organisation. 

The primary aim of the policy is to ensure responsible, respectful and effective use of social media while protecting the organisation's reputation and interests.

Are you looking for some data protection training for your inset day(s) at the start of term?  Here are some ideas about how to raise awareness around data protection and cyber security for your staff. 

The training should be relevant, accurate and up to date.