The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center recorded 408 publicly disclosed security incidents last year, an increase of 18% from 2019 and the highest number since it began tracking incidents in 2016. These include student and staff data breaches, ransomware and other malware attacks, phishing campaigns and social engineering scams, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
This equated to a rate of at least two incidents per school, per day, over the course of last year.
Data breaches and leaks were the most reported type of incident (36%), followed by ransomware (12%), DoS (5%), and phishing (2%). Most (45%) fall under the umbrella of "other," including new attacks that surfaced in the second quarter as COVID-19 began to rise and schools moved online.