ransomware in Education

Education Deserves Advanced Grade Ransomware Protection

Ransomware attacks targeting the education sector have become so frequent and disruptive that they are likely to cause more school closures than weather-related incidents.

Unfortunately, most ransomware attacks today include the theft of sensitive student and faculty data with the threat of exposure, so even when an attack is resolved, students and staff continue to be at risk of identity theft and financial fraud.

Technical debt and a lack of skilled security professionals leaves the education sector at greater risk of being targeted than other industries.

Ransomware Poses a Critical Threat for Education

Ransomware attacks are one of the biggest threats facing any organization today, and the education sector has been hit particularly hard:

Attacks targeting education institutions spiked to record levels in August of 2023 just as schools were getting ready for the fall term.

Minneapolis Public Schools were extorted for $1 million after attackers threatened to expose sensitive student data including info on sexual assaults, psychiatric diagnosis, abuse, truancy, suicide attempts, and more.

The nonprofit National Student Clearinghouse, which provides data services to roughly 22,000 high schools and 3,600 universities, was the victim of data exfiltration at the hands of ransomware attackers.

Legacy security tools (EPP/EDR/XDR) were simply not designed to address the unique threat that ransomware presents, and this is why we keep seeing destructive ransomware attacks circumvent these traditional security solutions and impact education organizations.

Ransomware: The New Snow Days for Education Sector

Ransomware attacks causing more closures than the weather

People and Processes

Legacy technology debt, multiple infection vectors, a shortage of security staff professionals, and threat of downtime losses make manufacturing a primary target for ransomware operators.

Downtime and Recovery

From initial detection to full recovery, it takes on average 22 days (about 3 weeks) to restore operations following a successful ransomware attack. Education providers cannot afford weeks of downtime and closures.

This is why Halcyon enlisted some of the top engineers, data scientists, and threat researchers in cyber security to develop the Halcyon Anti-Ransomware Platform.

Halcyon delivers a purpose-built ransomware prevention solution that provides multiple layers of prevention, detection and recovery through proprietary encryption key material capture that autonomously restores systems to operation in a matter of minutes versus weeks.

Motivations

Ransomware operators are motivated by profit, and they have vast resources for the development of more advanced attack techniques. Unfortunately, they see the manufacturing sector extremely attractive targets.

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Empowering Education with Resilience

The new model for building resilient education organizations requires:
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Defense Resilience

Existing EPP/EDR/XDR were not designed to stop ransomware attacks in progress. Halcyon AI/ML models are trained on millions of real-world ransomware attacks to fill the detection and prevention gap left by traditional security tools.

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Stop Bypass & Evasion

Ransomware operators disable endpoint security tools with relative ease. Halcyon protects other security tools from being bypassed, unhooked, or blinded during a ransomware attack to increase ROI on all security investments.

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Operational Resilience

Ransomware attacks are designed to be disruptive. The unique Halcyon encryption key material capture and anti-data exfiltration features prevent exposure of sensitive data and assure operational resilience against successful attacks.

Halcyon Offers the Most Powerful Ransomware Protection

Legacy security tools are failing to catch the telltale signs of ransomware attacks until it is too late, so we keep seeing destructive attacks circumvent these solutions.

Identify and transfer locker

RANSOMWARE OPERATIONS PREVENTION

Halcyon delivers AI/ML-powered next-generation behavioral modeling to detect ransomware precursors, pre-execution blocking of ransomware payloads, and unparalleled evasion protection.


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Deploy Halcyon Agent

DATA EXFILTRATION PREVENTION

Halcyon detects attacker actions to predict and prevent bulk data movement associated with data exfiltration to protect education providers from breaches that lead to costly liability and extortion demands.


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Initiate the Decryption

RAPID RANSOMWARE RECOVERY

Only Halcyon delivers proprietary encryption key material capture and autonomous decryption to keep education organizations operational in the face of a successful ransomware attack.

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Halcyon Anti-Ransomware Platform

Halcyon is the only platform to leverage advanced AI/ML detection models specifically trained to defeat ransomware. The unique Halcyon Anti-Ransomware Platform is easy to deploy, does not conflict with existing endpoint security solutions, and provides multiple levels of detection, prevention and recovery against ransomware attacks.

Talk to a Halcyon expert today to find out more and check out our Recent Ransomware Attacks resource site to get near real-time tracking of ransomware attacks, threat actor groups and their victims.

See Halcyon in action

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