Due to the rapid increase in technology, the schools are highly reliant on computers to provide classes to the students. This is an easy and quick way to deliver the information and get the output at the same time. But due to this comes the danger as well. It is also an easy way to get cyber threats that are very hazardous to the information and data stored in the computers.
It can also infect the computers with viruses and other issues that can impact the exam timing, strain the resources, affect the use of labs, and many more. Therefore, it becomes very important to take care of the computer labs and protect them from cyber threats. Well, to do so, we have gathered some of the ways that you can follow and protect the computer labs of the school. Let’s find out one by one.
Effective Ways Of Ensuring Cyber Safety In Computer Labs
Here are some of the useful ways that you can take help of to secure the computer labs of your school. These will surely work and bring the results. Have a look at all of them.
- Initiate training and awareness programs
As teachers keep the computer labs under their control and take classes or lessons from them so it is important to regularly train the teachers, students, or staff on cyber hygiene, phishing, and incident reporting. You can also take the help of activities or gamification, such as OSINT, password cracking demos, to have a deeper engagement.
- Promote safe browsing
If there are any risky files in the computers, such as bat, exe, or others, then block them or put a restriction on access to them. Another way of protecting the computers is awareing your students about phishing, HTTPS, and suspicious links. This will ensure minimal chances of threats related to cybersecurity.
- Protect the lab properly
To protect the labs of your school, you must have endpoint detection and response tools and up-to-date antivirus software on all the systems of your labs. This will ensure a tight safety of all the systems. Along with this, do arrange the systems into an auto-update OS and software for more security.
- Monitor the systems
to check the activity of the users in the lab and serves both in real time and the logging out. This will help you to take precautions before any incident. Coupled with this do conduct regular audits for more security and zero threats.
- Create cyber security policy
In order to keep the computer labs safe and secure, it is very important to create clear, enforceable, and acceptable policies and guidelines for the same. Make sure all of these must adhere to the frameworks, like NIST or CIS. It will be healthy and beneficial for all the students and teachers, and will keep the systems safe and secure.
- Keep regular backplans
Although it should not happen but if somehow you lose all your data, then how will you get it? To do so, you can have regular and immutable backups for all the essential data. You can also test restoration processes in order to have resilience during ransomware or data loss events. This will help you save all the important data stored in the computer labs for teachers and students.
- Restrict the actions and keep them limited
In order to protect the computer labs of the school from cyber threats, it is very important to impose permission based on rules and zero trust principles. This will keep the access limited and allow them to have what they want. Create unique logins and restrict the administrative rights for the students so that you can keep the systems safe in every possible way.
- Create strong passwords
A simple and authentic way to keep the information safe and secure is to create strong password policies (length, complexity, rotation) and multifactor authentication. This is an effective way to keep the information confidential without harming it.
Sum Up!
This was all about the ways in which you can keep the computer labs of your school safe and secure. As you are well aware of the fact that schools’ computers contain all the essential information related to students and teachers, so it becomes very important to keep it protected and confidential. Therefore, all the ways mentioned above are effective in keeping the computer labs safe and secure. So, do take the help of all these tips to make sure you leave zero space for cyber threats.