Online Education and Increasing Cyber Security Concerns During Covid-19 Pandemic
Shazia Shaikh, Nafisa Khan, Ayesha Sultana, Nazneen Akhter · Advances in computer science research · 2023
COVID-19 pandemic has hard hit not only global economy but also the education sector.The sudden shift to online education not only threw technological challenges but posed some serious privacy and security concerns as well.When online classes became the new normal for not only universities and high schools but even the primary schools, it turned out that most of them were not prepared for the new fully digital format.The students and institutions both lacked in technical resources in some cases while in most of the cases the educational institutions were not at all prepared for cyber-attacks, putting cyber security of all stake holders at increased risk.In this study, we surveyed the cyber-attacks on the educational institutions during the covid-19 pandemic.Our study revealed that over 95% of IT infrastructures of the educational institutions were not able to protect themselves and the students from the cyber-attacks that crippled the education system in its entirety in some cases.We present a brief review of the cyber-attacks made on the education sector during covid-19 and the tools and technologies adopted and the types of attacks each tool faced.We also present the cyber security tools being utilized and we also propose some preventive suggestions as a primary safe guard.