In one analysis, education had 35.3% vulnerable web applications.

In one analysis, education had 17.6% vulnerable cloud assets.

In one analysis, education had 31% of vulnerable assets across cloud, APIs, and web applications.

Almost 40% of ransomware attacks in the US targeted the education sector

Organisations in the educational services sector accounted for 63 percent of all VPN use.

In higher education specifically, ransomware attacks were up 70% over 2022.

Check Point Research placed the average number of weekly cyberattacks on educational institutions at 3,574 in 2024, a 75% increase from the previous year.

For large organisations, the average Phish Prone Percentage (PPP) after one year of sustained training dropped to 4.9%.

After 90 days of training and simulated phishing tests, the Phish Prone Percentages (PPPs) for the education sector reduced to 19%, 19.4%, and 18% respectively for small, medium, and large organisations.

In 2023, Trustwave researchers monitored 352 ransomware claims against educational institutions.

After one year or more of sustained training, the average Phish Prone Percentage (PPP) for small institutions dropped dramatically to 3.9%.

For medium sized organisations, the average Phish Prone Percentage PPP after one year of sustained training dropped to 5.2%.

KnowBe4's 2024 Phishing by Industry Benchmarking Report found that in the education sector specifically, the baseline PPP (Phish Prone Percentage) for small organisations (1-249 employees) was 33.4%.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence blocked more than 15,000 quishing (QR Code Phishing) emails per day to the education sector over the past year.

A hacker breached Mobile Guardian in August 2024 and remotely wiped data from at least 13,000 students’ iPads and Chromebooks.

According to the United Kingdom’s Department of Science Innovation and Technology 2024 Cybersecurity Breaches Survey, 43% of higher education institutions in the UK reported experiencing a breach or cyberattack at least once a week.

HTML attachments make up 82% of malicious email attachments in the education sector

According to the Malwarebytes report, 43% of all ransomware in education attacks in 2023 targeted higher education and 36% of attacks targeted K-12.

Of confirmed data breaches examined by Verizon, 1,780 incidents (17%) were attacks against the education system, with 1,537 (14%) confirmed data disclosure.

The Toronto District School Board data breach in September 2024 compromised data from 235,000 students across 582 schools.