From small K–12 districts to large universities, educational institutions have become one of the most frequent targets for cybercriminals. The shift to hybrid learning models, ever-expanding digital ecosystems and a diverse user base — often less aware of security best practices — have all contributed to making education one of the most vulnerable sectors today. In just the past couple of months, a wave of cyberattacks has disrupted the operations of several school districts and universities across the U.S., compromising sensitive data belonging to students, faculty and staff.
If you’re an IT pro or IT admin in education, you already understand the daily challenges in managing these complex education IT environments. Imagine the chaos when a university’s network is locked down by ransomware during finals week — grading halted, enrollment systems offline, and panicked faculty and students flooding support lines. Or when a school district accidentally deletes vital student records, causing multiple days of disruption. Add to that the growing burden of managing remote learning platforms and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies, and it’s clear just how fragile modern education IT infrastructures can be without robust protection.
IT teams are expected to manage and secure all of this with limited resources, tight budgets and rising demands, which can often feel like an impossible task. However, by adopting a few key business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) best practices, IT teams in schools and universities can build greater resilience, reduce downtime and ensure that teaching and learning continue uninterrupted. Let’s explore the four BCDR best practices for educational institutions.
Best practice 1: Regularly test your disaster recovery plan
Having a disaster recovery (DR) plan on paper isn’t enough; it needs to work in the real world. The only way to be confident it will work? Test it regularly. Too often, organizations build detailed plans that go untested until disaster strikes. By then, it’s too late.
Why it matters
A tested DR plan ensures your educational institution can bounce back quickly from unexpected disruptions. Whether it’s a ransomware attack or a severe weather event, different scenarios demand different recovery strategies. By simulating these situations, you can validate your recovery processes, train your teams and ensure that roles and responsibilities are clearly understood.
What testing uncovers
Routine testing helps you spot issues before they become major problems. It can reveal outdated contact lists, misconfigured backup settings, hardware limitations or unclear communication protocols. These are exactly the kinds of surprises you don’t want in the middle of a real crisis.
Consider running these types of tests:
- Plan review: Bring together IT and leadership to audit documentation, vendor contracts and team responsibilities.
- Walk-through drill: Simulate a real event step by step, from triggering the DR plan to contacting key personnel and initiating failover.
- Sandbox test: Use third-party Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solutions to create isolated environments for non-disruptive testing of your systems and backup processes.
Best practice 2: Harden your defenses against ransomware
According to Cybersecurity Ventures, by 2031, a new ransomware attack will strike every 2 seconds, with annual damages projected to reach $275 billion. This ransomware risk is especially high for educational institutions.
Why it matters
A single compromised device can take down an entire school district. Ransomware spreads fast, crippling student information systems (SIS), locking educators out of their teaching platforms and even halting payroll. Once inside, attackers often go after backup data to block recovery efforts and increase ransom demands.
What you can do
IT teams must take a layered approach to stop ransomware before it spreads and ensure recovery remains possible even if it does. Focus on a combination of preventative tools, user awareness and backup security.
- Implement endpoint protection and restrict admin access: Use advanced endpoint detection tools to identify threats early and tightly control administrative access to reduce the attack surface.
- Train staff and students on phishing awareness: The majority of ransomware attacks start with a phishing email. Training users to recognize and report suspicious activity is a critical first line of defense.
- Use hardened Linux-based backup systems: Opt for solutions that run backups in a hardened Linux environment. This isolates the backup infrastructure from the common vulnerabilities found in Windows systems, making it harder for attackers to compromise backup data.
- Store backups in isolated, immutable cloud environments: Ensure a clean recovery point by keeping at least one copy of your backups off-site, off-network and immutable. These backups cannot be changed or deleted — even by someone with admin access — giving you a reliable restore option in the event of an attack.
Choose the 3-2-1-1-0 strategy
The classic 3-2-1 rule is no longer enough. Today, experts recommend the 3-2-1-1-0 approach:
✔ 3 copies of your data
✔ 2 different storage media
✔ 1 off-site copy
✔ 1 immutable copy
✔ 0 errors during recovery due to regular verification and testing
This updated strategy addresses the modern threat landscape where ransomware not only targets production systems but also actively seeks out backup data. By embracing 3-2-1-1-0, schools can ensure that recovery is fast, reliable and untouchable, even in a worst-case scenario.
Best practice 3: Protect student data and user accounts
Schools and universities handle a wide range of sensitive data, everything from personally identifiable information (PII) and academic records to health and behavioral data. Regulations like the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) demand strict data privacy and access controls. However, with the growing digital footprints and increasingly distributed systems, staying compliant and secure is becoming increasingly complex.
Why it matters
When even one user account is compromised, the consequences can extend far beyond the individual. Attackers can move laterally through the network, escalate privileges and gain access to critical systems. In addition to operational disruption, such breaches can lead to regulatory violations, reputational damage and potential legal consequences.
What you can do
Protecting user accounts and sensitive student data requires a proactive approach to access control and identity protection. Start with these essential practices:
- Enforce multifactor authentication (MFA): MFA adds a critical layer of security, preventing unauthorized access even if credentials are stolen.
- Implement role-based access control (RBAC): Limit access to sensitive data and systems based on job function. Ensure users only see and interact with what they need.
- Support granular backup and recovery: Choose backup solutions that allow for precise recovery at the file or folder level. This lets IT teams quickly restore specific user data without needing to roll back entire systems.
That’s where Unitrends comes in Unitrends delivers a comprehensive, all-in-one backup and recovery platform that simplifies data protection across your entire IT environment. Whether your data resides on-premises, in the cloud, within SaaS applications or across endpoint devices, Unitrends ensures seamless backup, fast recovery and complete resilience against cyberthreats, accidental deletions and system failures.
Why do businesses worldwide trust Unitrends with their data?
- Unified protection across all workloads: Secure on-premises servers, virtual machines, endpoints, SaaS applications and cloud workloads — all from a single platform.
- Automated recovery assurance testing: Ensure that backup and disaster recovery plans work as expected with automated, non-disruptive testing. You will never be caught off guard during a real outage.
- Orchestrated failover for business continuity: Get fast and seamless failover to minimize downtime, ensuring your critical applications and data remain available even in the event of a disaster.
- Secure, immutable cloud storage: Protect backups from ransomware with immutable storage, preventing unauthorized changes or deletions of critical data.
- Flexible and cost-efficient Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS): Leverage fully managed DR solutions with cloud-based failover. Get near-instant recovery and minimal disruption when disaster strikes.
Monitor for compromised credentials
Dark web monitoring is a critical, proactive layer in your defense strategy. It scans underground marketplaces and breach repositories for exposed usernames and passwords tied to your educational institution. Early detection gives you time to force password resets before credentials are exploited, lock compromised accounts and strengthen authentication methods.
Best practice 4: Streamline compliance and retention management
Educational institutions are subject to a wide range of data retention requirements. Federal mandates like FERPA, along with state and district-level policies, dictate how long student records, communications and administrative data must be preserved and how that data should be protected and accessed.
Why it matters
Failing to meet retention or audit requirements doesn’t just invite fines; it can also seriously damage your educational institution’s reputation. Incomplete documentation, lost records or delayed responses during an audit can erode trust among students, parents and regulatory bodies. IT teams need to ensure that data is not only stored securely but also readily retrievable and verifiably protected over time.
What you can do
To stay compliant and audit-ready, implement systems and policies that simplify and automate data management.
- Automate retention policies: Use tools that allow you to define and enforce data retention rules based on type, location or user role. This reduces the risk of manual errors and ensures data is retained for the right duration.
- Enable fast, organized access: Choose solutions that make it easy to locate and retrieve records during audits or legal requests without manually combing through backup sets.
- Generate clear recovery and retention reports: Regularly produce audit-ready reports that show recovery readiness, backup schedules and policy enforcement. These can be invaluable during compliance reviews or incident investigations.
Building a safer, smarter education environment
Educational institutions can’t control every threat, but they can control how prepared they are. By implementing tested recovery plans, hardening defenses, protecting student data and aligning with compliance requirements, schools and universities can drastically reduce risk and maintain operational continuity — even in the face of cyberattacks or technical failures.
Want to evaluate how your data protection strategy stacks up? Contact us to get expert guidance tailored to your education IT environment.