There’s an ever increasing need for schools and kura to ensure they have enough cybersecurity protection in place as online threats continue to rise. Richmond View School (RVS) in Blenheim recently experienced first hand how important cybersecurity protection is and the expert support N4L provides to schools in Aotearoa.
We have a dedicated group of security experts who monitor school networks for threats, vulnerabilities and attacks. If they find something, they’ll get in touch with the school and their IT provider letting them know what’s going on and help mitigate or remediate the risk.
Due to demand from their community, RVS is currently going through secondary expansion. They have grown from a full primary school with only 90 students five years ago, to catering for over 300 students. By adding on year groups every year, they aim to be a full high school by 2023 – the only co-educational one in the area.
Expanding the school to provide a community with a much needed resource comes with an increased level of technology complexity. By adding new teachers and older students, the amount of technology used not only increases, but is used in different ways. Security measures also need to be enhanced to keep up with both the internal increase in technology use and the unknown external threats, to ensure all students and staff are kept safe online.
“We are a small school with no IT provider, and technology is becoming too complex for us to deal with ourselves. With our limited knowledge and being time poor, it’s difficult to keep up”, says Dave Pauling, Richmond View School’s principal.
At the end of 2021 RVS experienced a cybersecurity incident, and our team of experts were on hand to help straight away. The phishing issue was discovered when another school received a suspicious email from RVS and reported it to our Customer Support team. They immediately communicated with Dave, who was unaware of the issue.
The Security team proactively investigated the issue and discussed a number of potential remediations and next steps with Dave. This included resetting passwords and implementing 2FA (two-factor authentication) which would be part of ongoing cybersecurity improvements for the growing school.
Our team was able to help when the school needed them most.
“We are educationalists not tech experts”, says Dave. “So when our school had a security issue, it was reassuring to know the N4L experts were helping in the background – dealing with things on our behalf”.
Dave also sees great value in N4L’s Customer Support team: “Time is one of the things we don’t have a lot of. Whenever we call the N4L Customer Support team, not only do we get through every time, without having to wait, we speak to someone who knows what they are talking about. It’s reassuring to have issues solved quickly while we are on the phone, and without getting passed about. The level of service and expertise from N4L is incredibly impressive”
Beating cyber crime requires a team effort. While N4L can proactively monitor the network, schools need to do their part too. It’s really important that broader security measures are in place to better protect against online threats.
Let’s all work together to help keep your school safe.
To find out more information about N4L’s cybersecurity services and what you can do to protect your school, click here. You can also reach out to your School Relationship Manager or call our Customer Support team on 0800 LEARNING.
