U.K. schools can now benefit from free cyber defense tools from the nation’s leading experts to help them protect their emails and websites from online attackers.
The government is encouraging all U.K. schools to sign up for Mail Check and Web Check: two services that help organizations identify potential cybersecurity issues and fix them promptly.
The Web Check service scans websites to check for common, significant vulnerabilities and sends a report to organizations flagging any issues according to severity alongside advice on how to fix the problems.
Mail Check is designed to help technical teams assess and improve two areas of email security: anti-spoofing controls to prevent attackers sending emails pretending to be from your organization, and email privacy measures to prevent data being altered or read in transit.
The tools, from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) – a part of GCHQ, have been rolled out to help schools defend against the continuing threat from cyber criminals whose activities can put sensitive data at risk and affect institutions’ reputation and ability to operate.
It is the latest example of the NCSC supporting the education sector as settings rely more on technology, with hundreds of universities already benefiting from the services which form part of the NCSC’s Active Cyber Defence program.
A recent Web Check scan of 10,800 college and university domains showed the service had alerted users to more than 2,700 urgent findings. Having been notified and prompted with NCSC mitigation advice, users have so far managed to fix more than 92% of these findings.
And in one case, thanks to Mail Check monitoring, one university was able to spot 36,642 malicious emails being sent out from their domain within the space of just two weeks.
Find out more at the U.K. National Cyber Security Center
