Do Cyber Attacks In Education Increase During Summer?
In 2024, 71% of UK secondary schools and 97% of universities were hit by cyberattacks.
What’s more, data indicates that cyberattacks increase by 40% during holiday periods, with the summer period being particularly vulnerable.
Schools breaking up for the summer holidays is a key window of opportunity for hackers due to idle networks, staff absences, unpatched systems and shifted focus.
In this article, we will break down ways your institution can stay protected over this critical period. After all, summer is for sun and fun, not cyber-attacks!
Why Are Schools a Prime Target For Cyber Attacks In Summer?
Reduced Staffing or Absence of IT Support
With key staff members on leave or working reduced hours, real-time monitoring is often scaled back.
If a hacker gains access during this period through phishing, unpatched vulnerabilities or compromised credentials, there is a higher chance they can go undetected.
Without rapid detection and response, minor breaches can escalate into full-scale ransomware attacks, data theft or system-wide compromise before the school even knows there’s a problem.
Increased Use of Remote Access
While students may be away during the summer break, many teaching, administrative, technical, and operational staff will log on remotely to handle tasks such as exam results, onboarding, scheduling, or finance.
This increases the school’s attack surface, especially dangerous at a time when monitoring is reduced.
Cybercriminals know these users are less vigilant and more likely to fall for phishing or allow unauthorised access, making them a prime entry point for summer breaches.
Idle Networks
During the summer break, many school networks and devices remain powered on but unused and unmonitored. This creates an ideal environment for cybercriminals to probe, escalate access and plant ransomware.
Unlike active term time, suspicious network activity may go unnoticed for longer, giving attackers more time to move laterally through systems, disable backups or exfiltrate data.
According to Sophos (2024), 71% of ransomware attacks in education succeeded in compromising backups, with many infiltrations going undetected until it was too late to recover.
Without live oversight or automated monitoring tools in place, idle networks can quickly become silent entry points for major breaches.
Shift of Focus
With Windows 10 EOL on the horizon, IT teams in the education sector have even more on their plate than usual this summer.
According to recent Department for Education data, around 93% of secondary schools and 85% of primary schools in England still use Windows 10.
This means that IT teams will likely need to shift focus to device auditing, procurement, installation and deployment, taking time away from essential cybersecurity defences.
With less time for essential cybersecurity defences like patching, account audits and phishing simulations, hackers may have an increased window of opportunity.
Common Types of Cyber Threats Facing UK Schools
Ransomware Attacks In Education
Ransomware continues to dominate headlines. Schools hold large volumes of sensitive data, including pupil records, safeguarding information and financial details, yet many lack the layered defences or real-time monitoring needed to protect it.
Attackers will often look to encrypt files across servers and endpoints, disable or delete backups before launching the attack, and demand payment in exchange for decryption.
During term time, it is easier to spot suspicious activity, but during summer, due to lighter staffing, reduced monitoring and dormant systems, attackers have more time and freedom to cause damage.
Phishing Attacks In Education
These attacks are low-cost, effective and grow more sophisticated by the day.
In higher education, the problem is even worse, with 100% of higher education institutions and over 90% of FE colleges reporting phishing attacks in 2024.
Hackers utilise seasonality to impersonate trusted entities. In the run-up to September, attackers may look to impersonate exam boards, suppliers or senior leaders.
At a time when workloads ramp up for many, and new staff members or part-time contractors are onboarded, it becomes less likely that staff will scrutinise emails as carefully.
DDoS Attacks In Education
Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks continue to pose a growing threat to UK education, particularly during quieter periods like the summer break.
According to Cloudflare’s Q1 2024 data, global DDoS attack volumes have surged by over 50% year-on-year, with a sharp increase in application-layer and DNS-based floods.
Many UK schools and Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) remain vulnerable, often lacking upstream DDoS protection or dedicated filtering tools.
These attacks not only disrupt access to MIS platforms, cloud storage or remote admin tools but can also serve as a distraction for more serious intrusions, such as ransomware deployment.
During summer, when systems are live but monitoring is minimal, the likelihood of delayed detection and longer outages significantly increases.
Preparing for a Safer Summer
Summer may feel like a quiet period, but for cybercriminals, it’s prime time.
With fewer staff in-office, lower monitoring activity and increased remote access, attackers exploit the seasonal lull to infiltrate systems, encrypt data or exfiltrate sensitive information unnoticed.
Protecting Your Data with Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud
Through our partnership with Acronis, we deliver market-leading cybersecurity solutions to our education partners. Their solutions are trusted by over 500,000 businesses and 5 million customers.
Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud is a single solution that combines backup, disaster recovery and AI-powered cybersecurity. It also provides centralised monitoring across all endpoints, including staff devices off-site. This ensures backups remain secure, breaches can be rolled back quickly, and IT teams can maintain visibility and control even while working remotely.
Last quarter, Acronis blocked over 48 million malicious URLs and helped businesses restore normal operations up to 80% faster.
Book A Free 30-Minute Acronis Demo With One Of Our Education IT Specialists…
Simplifying Windows 10 EOL
This summer, IT teams in education face even more distractions with the upcoming Windows 10 EOL deadline.
Any Windows 10 devices that are not upgraded to Windows 11 or given ESU upgrades will pose significant cybersecurity risks.
ebuyer takes the legwork out of the transition by offering a full range of Windows 11-ready devices tailored to education budgets, alongside upgrade services, patch continuity and pre-term deployment support.
This helps your IT team get ahead of the curve and ensure everything is ready for when the first bell rings in September.
By handling the complexity of device compatibility and rollout, ebuyer frees up IT teams to focus on higher-priority cybersecurity tasks.
Not sure where to start? Use our free Windows 11 Readiness Tool to instantly check which devices in your estate are upgrade-ready.
Our team of IT education specialists is on hand to provide expert Windows 10 EOL support in a flash.
