IT EXPERT: Cyberattacks could cripple NC schools

LELAND, NC (WWAY) — Schools, colleges, and universities across North Carolina are preparing to welcome students back to the classroom, but there’s a hidden danger they should prepare for: cyberattacks.

Earlier this year, a school district in Salisbury, NC was hit by an attack that disabled several systems and internet access.

Steve Cobb, chief information security officer at One Source, says the problem goes deeper than interrupting the school day.

“Several things happen, usually the rudimentary parts of just being able to teach students- some of that ability that goes away… but also think about on the back end, it hinders them from doing normal business,” Cobb said. “An educational institution is a business and they have accounting departments and HR and all those other things as well, all of those things become impacted.”

The decision of what to do next is a complicated one, especially when it comes to ransomware. In North Carolina, it is illegal for public institutions to pay the ransom for a cyberattack.

“In 2021, there were about 1,000 educational institutions that were affected by ransomware,” Cobb said. “I think the number was something like $3.5B in costs just in downtime, it has nothing to do with the ransoms that were paid.”

Cobbs says the best way to recover from a cyberattack like ransomware is to be prepared ahead of time.

“There’s really no magic bullet, the idea isn’t if it’s going to happen, the idea is when it’s going to happen,” Cobb said. “When it happens, you’ve got structure in place, maybe it’s policy and procedures or maybe it’s technical attributes like backup and disaster recovery and all those sorts of things we’ve talked about from a resiliency standpoint in the IT and security world.”

If organizations are not prepared, the outcome can be disastrous.

“We’ve seen too many times that businesses, and educational institutions especially, haven’t done the difficult work ahead of time to make sure they’re prepared,” Cobb said. “Last year a college up in Illinois actually closed its doors and went out of business. That’s not uncommon.”

If an organization is attacked, Cobb recommends they reach out to a cyber security firm for assistance.

“Get someone in who has been on the front lines of these cyber wars if you will, they’ve done hand to hand combat with these attackers, and put them in a place where they can help you be prepared, and then harden the environment so the attackers can’t come back,” he said.  “There’s pretty strong statistics out there that once you’re a victim, there’s about 70% rate of return, meaning the attackers will come back to those targets again.”

For more information about cyberattacks and how One Source works to combat them, click here.