The education sector was found to be the 7^th most-targeted industry in IBM’s 2020 Threat Intelligence Index and find themselves in the crosshairs of cyber criminals and nation-state attackers due to the vast amounts of personal information and research data that they hold. Whether they are looking to profit from selling stolen data, ransoms or gaining an advantage by stealing world-class research, the education sector is a target for threat actors and I'll explain how it can be better protected from cyber threats.

The debate of whether or not organisations should pay ransoms to cybercriminals in return for their unencrypted data has been going on for years. On one hand, as data is now the lifeblood of almost all organisations a successful ransomware attack can mean business closure. However, succumbing to the ransom is only fuelling the cybercrime economy which is now estimated to be the 3^rd largest in the world. But a recent report into ransomware attacks may add weight to the notion of never paying the ransom.