Education, education, education: Why document shredding is important for Higher Education

At the risk of repetition, the new academic year is about to kick off. Restore Datashred asks, are you ready?

From toddler groups to post-doc researchers, and every type of learning in between, the education sector is crucial to all our lives, whether that’s laying down skills and attributes for our working and leisure lives, pushing the boundaries of science or exploring and trying to understand what it means to be human (and other animals). And it creates a vast amount of data as both digital and paper assets!

Sadly, it is that data that according to IT Governance (itgovernance.co.uk), makes the education sector, on a global level, the second most breached sector (after healthcare). Many of these breaches are cyber-related and, backed up by information from the UK government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2023, the higher the level of education, the more prone the institution.

What is it that makes the higher education (HE) sector such an attractive target for cyber attacks? Well, there are reams of paper files and hundreds of millions of gigabytes of personal and sensitive information about the people in it, the work and research they produce – often in a highly competitive area – and the intellectual property rights attached to this. Then there’s the high turnover of student numbers and the sheer size of the student community – this creates huge numbers of unique users with potential access to who knows what – and it only takes one click on a phishing email to compromise swathes of this community. And, lastly, it’s a challenge in the face of resource and budgetary constraints, to stay ahead of the latest security vulnerabilities.

In addition, the Covid pandemic forced a hurried move to the online environment for learning and research and some HE institutions were not properly ready for this, meaning that, since 2020, universities have become a persistent target for extortionists, the light-fingered, and those harbouring a grudge.

That these vulnerabilities are exacerbated by the size of a typical HE institution is borne out by figures from the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2023. Universities typically suffer more heavily than businesses do in all the following areas:

51% of HE institutions and 30% of further education (FE) colleges reported experiencing breaches or attacks at least weekly.
61% of HE institutions experience a negative outcome, such as loss of money or data from any breaches or attacks.
45% of HE institutions say that their accounts or systems were compromised and used for illicit purposes.
75% of HE institutions say they were negatively impacted by a breach, whatever the outcome. They report – 70% of them – that they needed additional staff time to deal with the attack, or to inform customers or stakeholders and then introduce new measures to prevent or protect against further breaches.

It’s clear that their sheer scale makes the HE sector particularly vulnerable. But primary schools are also targeted in the same way – 15% reporting weekly malicious attempts, with 22% suffering negative outcomes, for example. In a 2018 report, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), voiced concern that, during its investigations, a significant proportion of educational establishments failed to keep confidential waste secure.

At Restore Datashed, they don’t have a silver bullet…

But they do suggest that you can up the ante and increase your peace of mind. The same ICO report backed the indispensable nature of having a formal retention and disposal policy for keeping data, in all formats, confidential throughout its lifecycle.

Restore Datashred offers a professional, and final, stage to your data’s lifecycle – whether a paper or digital asset. They shred it all into unusable, unreadable fragments of plastic and paper that no one would ever have enough time to piece together if they even got their hands on them in the first place. They can’t because security breaches are not a part of our business model. They stake our reputation on the safe passage of your confidential assets – USB sticks, discs, hard drives and, yes, paper – from your place onto our shredding blades, and on into recycling. Whether from the office, home workers, or off-site professional storage facility, they will adapt and tailor their range of services to suit your needs.

The services on offer from Restore Datashred include:

Off-site shredding - A reliable solution specifically tailored to meet the needs of your organisation.

Hard drive and media destruction - Shredding and data security is about much more than paper…

Regular shredding - With a regularly scheduled shredding service you can protect yourself from data breaches.

One-time shredding - Clear out those filing cabinets and boxes stuffed with old documentation.

Don’t be part of the ICO’s next statistics, get in touch with their knowledgeable and approachable customer service team on 0333 060 1077 for details of how we can help you be proactive about getting systems in place before the start of term that beat the hackers, hacktivists and intellectual property thieves.