The trend of phishing campaigns continued into the last year, with phishing and fraudulent
emails representing almost two-thirds of the most frequent cyberattack attempts in the
education sector. However, respondents further reported that approximately two-thirds of
these attempts did not result in a cyber incident, which is comparable to other sectors. Since
phishing attacks primarily target individual users, their training or resilience testing is generally
considered the best prevention. The steady growth of the number of educational institutions
that provide these trainings is a positive trend (see Graph 26).
100%
Yes
80%
60%
No
79
71
50
50
40%
29
21
20%
0%
2020
2021
2022
Graph 26: Education Sector Organisations Providing Cybersecurity Training (%)
Academic research represents a valuable target for state-sponsored groups and phishing can
be one of the ways for these actors to gain access to a victim’s systems. User resilience testing
using simulated phishing campaigns may, among other things, help reduce this risk. Despite the
growing share of organizations in the education sector that train their employees, this sector lags
slightly behind others in resilience testing (see Graph 27). It cannot be ruled out (25-50 %) that
one of the factors contributing to this situation is the state of funds allocated to cybersecurity,
which 84% of respondents in the education sector rate as insufficient, which is about one fifth
more than in other sectors.
Educational sector
50%
40%
Other subjects
47
40
42
37
30%
26
22
20%
16
11
10%
13
5
0%
No tests
Simulated phishing
campaigns
Penetration
tests
Technical
or non-technical
exercises
Other subjects
Graph 27: Do you Test the Resilience of your Employees Against Cyber Threats?
(% of Respondents)
28