Cyber incidents and attacks have significant operational and financial impacts on organisations and businesses. The incidents or attacks will often be intentional and unauthorised attempts to access, change or damage data and digital technology. They could be made by a person, group or organisation outside or inside your organisation.
A cyber incident or attacks will often be an intentional and unauthorised attempt to access, change or damage data and digital technology - please note the attempt does not need to be successful in order for it to be deemed a cyber incident.
Ways to protect and prevent cyber incidents:
- Conduct regular risk assessments and review
- Create and implement a cyber awareness plan
- Secure technology and data with anti-malware and a firewall
- Control and secure user accounts and access privileges
- License digital technology and keep it up to date
- Develop and implement a plan to backup your data and review regularly
- Filter and monitor your systems
- Report cyber attacks - have an internal reporting and recording process for incidents.
An example of a cyber incident:
Repeated attempts at accessing one of your organisation's systems, such as email by using contact details and names from your social media or website, for example. Ensure that MFA is set up for all cloud accounts that contain personal data, and that any other method of remote access is restricted, such as RDS. If necessary reset everyone's password. Use the 'cyber incident' to report and confirm that your systems are robust to SLT, or review on how they could be improved.
Schools and Colleges should refer to the DfE Cyber Security Standards
Consider using the Police CyberAlarm service whatever kind of business or organisation you are.
What to do in the event of a Cyber Attack
Tell someone! Report to IT. Report to SLT.Unplug the computer from the internet by removing the ethernet cable or turning the Wi-Fi off. Isolate the infected device and pass to IT
If you are a victim of a ransomware attack we would recommend reporting this to:
Action Fraud: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/ as well as your data protection officer so they can advise about the data loss or your local police and ask for the cyber crime team or phone 101 and ask for the cyber crime team.
Most cyber crimes like these will also need to be reported to the ICO by your data protection officer. Our customers should email
These incidents should also be reported to the DfE sector cyber team at
Academy trusts have to report these attacks to ESFA.
Where the incident causes long term school closure, the closure of more than 1 school or serious financial damage, you should also inform the National Cyber Security Centre.
Always ensure there are backups you can restore from. Preserving evidence is as important as recovering from the crime.
Forward suspicious emails to