The education sector has quietly become one of the most targeted environments for cybercrime.
Schools, colleges and universities across Europe are facing a surge in digital threats. They’re connected, cloud-enabled, and filled with sensitive data – but still often protected by outdated defences, overstretched IT staff, and a culture of assumed trust.
This is no longer a safe combination. And attackers know it.
Why Education Became a Target
Educational institutions store a vast amount of valuable information – student identities, financial records, research IP, and credentials to critical systems.
They also provide thousands of access points: personal laptops, shared lab computers, remote teaching portals, and virtual classrooms. Many run on legacy infrastructure with limited visibility or segmentation.
This creates fertile ground for phishing, ransomware, spoofed portals, and lateral movement – especially when schools rely on open networks and unmanaged devices.
According to the UK Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2025, 91% of higher education institutions, 85% of further education colleges, and 63% of secondary schools identified cyber breaches or attacks in the past 12 months. In comparison, only 43% of UK businesses reported the same.
The message is clear: education is no longer flying under the radar.
Common Threats Hitting Schools Right Now
Cyber threats targeting schools have evolved fast, and they no longer require advanced tactics to succeed.
What we’re seeing:
- Phishing emails impersonating school administrators or payment departments
- Compromised credentials reused across remote learning platforms
- Unpatched systems being exploited to plant ransomware
- Students or staff unknowingly download infected browser extensions
And these are just the surface issues. The real damage often comes from dwell time – weeks or months during which threat actors remain undetected inside the network.
Outdated Defences Are Still Everywhere
Despite the risk, many institutions still rely on consumer-grade antivirus software, open Wi-Fi networks, and unmanaged endpoint access.
This isn’t resilience. It’s risk exposure.
Schools need the same level of security expected in the financial or healthcare sector, adapted for education’s unique constraints. This means real-time access controls, secure identity verification, and device-level protection that works whether a student logs in from the classroom, their home, or a public network.
The NIS 2 Directive Is Raising the Bar
The NIS 2 Directive, the EU’s updated cybersecurity framework, expands obligations to more essential entities, including public sector education institutions in many countries.
By early 2025, countries such as Belgium, Croatia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, and Italy had transposed NIS 2 into law. More are set to follow.
(ECSO NIS2 Directive Transposition Tracker)
This directive demands stronger risk assessments, incident reporting, supply chain accountability and governance across IT systems. For educational institutions, this means investing in monitoring, detection, and response – not just infrastructure.
In the UK, the Department for Education is collaborating with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to enhance cybersecurity standards in publicly funded schools, recommending annual risk assessments and breach preparedness.
What Forward-Thinking Schools Are Doing Differently
Some schools have already started to break away from outdated models. We’re seeing increased adoption of:
- Secure boot and hardware-level endpoint protection, such as TPM modules and device encryption, particularly on school-issued laptops
- Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) frameworks that grant access per session, not per device
- Central identity management systems with multi-factor authentication, even for students
- Cloud-native Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) adoption for scalable, policy-driven connectivity
While the wider education sector is still catching up, these institutions are future-proofing their environments without slowing down the learning process.
According to Hughes’ Secure Access report, 32% of organisations globally have already implemented SASE, and another 31% are in evaluation stages, including within education-focused digital transformation projects.
What Needs to Change Next
Security that slows down teachers and frustrates students won’t work, but nor will pretending that legacy tools are enough.
It’s time to focus on solutions that are:
- Context-aware: analysing identity, posture, and behaviour
- Unified: applying the same policies to managed and unmanaged devices
- Adaptive: capable of real-time risk-based decisions
- Invisible: securing learning without disrupting it
The best systems are those that sit quietly in the background, enforcing access, blocking anomalies, and keeping staff and students safe without disrupting their workflow.
Education doesn’t need more awareness. It needs action. If your school, college or university is still relying on perimeter-based security or unmanaged BYOD access, the real breach isn’t in your firewall – it’s in your assumptions.
Security that scales with your ecosystem starts with visibility, context, and control. Anything less is a liability already being tested.
ENHALO works with educational institutions to implement security frameworks designed for today’s threat landscape. If you’re ready to modernise your defences – without disrupting how learning happens – get in touch.
