Education sector suffers most from cyber attacks, survey finds

A new survey looking at how prominent cyber attacks are in different industries has shown that the education sector has experienced the most cyber attacks, with 78% from the sector reporting this.

The survey by Indusface of 2,200 respondents from 16 different industries set out to discover which sector has experienced the most cyber attacks, as well as which type of cyber attacks are the most common among businesses.

Indusface found that 83% of the Education sector don’t actively train their employees in cyber security — the third lowest percentage after Transport (89%) and Accommodation (97%).

A cyber attack can have highly problematic outcomes for businesses within the Education sector specifically, such as hackers gaining access to an administrator or teacher’s sessions, and confidential personal information.

The Arts, Entertainment and Recreation sector ranks second, with 68% of respondents  having experienced a cyber attack. 32% of businesses in the sector are not actively training employees in cyber security.

This can result in Arts, Entertainment and Recreation businesses experiencing email hacking attacks across industries (61.54%).

The Accommodation and Food sector ranks in third place, with 67% of survey respondents reporting that they have experienced a cyber attack. 97% of respondents in this sector are not actively providing employee training in cyber security.

Almost two thirds (64%) of all survey respondents reported that email hacking was the method used in their cyber attack, suggesting more training needs to be done in this particular area to ensure the industry can keep its systems safe.