CYBERSECURITY TRAINING FOR TEACHERS (CTT)

Cyber Attacks on Online Learning Platforms Transcript

In this session, we shall look at the various cybersecurity attacks on online learning platforms. As a
teacher, have you experienced any cyber security attacks while you're conducting your online
learning sessions? Maybe yes or maybe no. When we learn about these attacks, you will be able to
realize that you might have experienced these particular attacks.

The first attack we are going to look at is Zoombombing. Currently, most schools are using Zoom to
conduct their online learning sessions. You may ask yourself, what is Zoombombing? Zoombombing
is a situation where an attacker accesses your Zoom class session without your authorization and
disrupts learning. And how does Zoombombing take place?
There are several ways of how zoombombing takes place. First, Zoombombing will happen if you do
not secure your Zoom sessions with passwords. Normally, Zoom sessions have Zoom numbers or
session numbers. And in most cases, you will see that attackers keep on guessing these Zoom
session numbers. And once they reach, say accidentally reach your session, and you have not
secured their session with a passcode, they will easily enter your session and disrupt your learning.

Another way that Zoombombing takes place is a situation where you share your Zoom session
number and the password to the public domain. Once you do that, when attackers get hold of this
information, they will easily access your session and disrupt your learning. How do you protect
yourself against Zoom bombing?

For you to protect yourself against Zoom bombing, first, avoid reusing the Zoom session numbers
and passwords. Naturally, as human beings, we are lazy. As a teacher, you may tell yourself that you
have this class in the morning and another one in the afternoon. So there's no need to create a new
session for the afternoon class. You'll just reuse the morning session in the afternoon session. But
that is very wrong. Because when the attacker has gotten access to your morning class, they will
easily compromise your afternoon class. Therefore, it's important that for every new session, you
create a new password and a new session number.

The second way you can protect yourself against Zoombombing is to ensure that you lock your
Zoom sessions and use passwords always. So that in case an attacker comes in when the session is
on, they will not access your session because you have locked it, and you have used a password to
secure your session.

The third way you can protect yourself is to avoid sharing Zoom session credentials on public
domains. For example, do not share them on Facebook or Instagram. But rather it's advisable that
you text every student individually and tell them the Zoom session number and the Zoom passcode.

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CYBERSECURITY TRAINING FOR TEACHERS (CTT)
Fourthly, ensure that you use the Zoom security features. For example, on Zoom, we have a waiting
room. When the students are logging in, or your participants are logging in to our session, they will
be kept in the waiting room. From the waiting room, you will be able to verify that these are the
correct people, or these are the right students to access your lesson. And in this case, there will be
no disruptions. Basically, that's how you protect yourself against Zoombombing.

Let us look at another attack, which is security breach or data breach or information breach. And
how does security breach occur or what is a security breach? A security breach is a situation where
an intruder gains access to your system without your authorization. And once they gain this access,
they compromise your information. They may expose it or alter your information. That is a security
breach.

We have three common ways of how security breaches occur. The first way is through hackers.
Hackers gain unauthorized access and maybe this is facilitated through phishing. They gain
unauthorised access to our system. Once they gain this unauthorized access into your system, they
compromised your information. They might even encrypt it or alter your information, or they might
copy it and expose it to the public domain.

The second way how security breach takes place is through human error. And what do I mean by
human error? Human error is a situation you as a teacher or even me, accidentally sends mails or
information to the wrong person who is not authorized to access that information. Or maybe lose
my information or my electronic gadgets; that is my mobile phone or even my mobile gadget. And
once I lose these gadgets, the information that is stored in these gadgets can be easily accessed by
unauthorized people, which leads to a security breach.

Another way how a security breach can occur is through unauthorized use. For instance, as a
teacher, you might have been authorized to access the student's exam records, but you're not
authorized to alter anything on those records. But as a teacher, maybe you see that your students
have performed so poorly. So you end up changing their exam grades so that the school head can see
that as a teacher, you have performed well. In the course of altering those records, you are causing a
data breach.

How do you protect yourself against data breaches? One way of protecting yourself against security
breaches is by enhancing your system login credentials. How do you enhance your system login
credentials? For example, you might apply two-factor authentication, whereby once you log into the
system, it prompts you on your mobile phone. It gives you a code, which you have to input that code
first for you to access the system. Or you might mix passwords with biometrics, whereby you use
your fingerprints, or even your iris to log in to the system.

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CYBERSECURITY TRAINING FOR TEACHERS (CTT)
Another way of how you can protect yourself against security breaches is to use different passwords
on different accounts or different systems. And when you do that, when one of your accounts is
compromised by an attacker, the attacker cannot use the same login credentials from this account to
compromise another account or another system. It's also advisable that you use secure passwords.
In the coming week, you will learn how to create secure passwords.

You are also advised to protect your devices, especially mobile devices, because these devices can be
easily stolen, or you can easily lose them and when you lose them, you don't know in whose hands
they're going to land in. They may land in the hands of a criminal who will now gain unauthorized
access to information which leads to a security breach.

And lastly, you are advised to always back up your information and secure your backup. In case you
lose your information or your gadgets, you can easily get your backup information and continue
with your business as usual. This brings us to the end of this in this video. In this video, we have
looked at two attacks. That is Zoom bombing and security breach.