Progression in Cyber Security Concerns for Learning Management Systems
Tejaswini Apte, Sarika Sharma · 2021
In today’s technology driven environment, the educational sector is adopting technologies, and online deliveries of sessions have increased the scope for discussion and knowledge sharing multifold. This has also opened up new ground for various opportunities in cyberspace. Educational bodies are facing several challenges as dependency on cyber-physical systems (CPSs) is increasing. A learning management system (LMS) is one of the CPSs used as a platform for online delivery of sessions. Many professional bodies disseminate online education and are responsible for their respective assessments. However, on the down side it tags itself with many cyber threats, with which users or participants are not familiar. The perception and knowledge of cyber security is predominantly required to address the assessments and thereby the outcome of delivery by professional bodies supporting higher education. The infrastructure used to build and deploy online session delivery (i.e., LMSs) plays a considerable role in implementing security standards and guidelines, hence policies, for an organization. The distributed nature of online LMSs with the greater support of advancement of scalability and functionality has increased the complexity of the system, which has spawned various threads for non-legitimate users to exploit the vulnerabilities in the existing architecture of LMSs. In addition, the invention of various mobile devices to access online LMSs serves as a catalyst for such exploitation. There is a need to bring forward the essentials of cyber security in education and its adoption by participants (instructors or learners). The authors have analyzed various vulnerabilities present in LMSs and studied the role and adoption intentions of instructors regarding cyber security measures.