While businesses are often the target of cyberattacks, a new BBC Radio 4 study found that two-thirds of UK universities had been hacked in the past four years. In addition to obtaining information about the students and staff, the hackers responsible for the attacks also obtained valuable academic research. According to EfficientIP, UK universities and the public sector in general do not understand the value of the data they hold, making IT infrastructure extremely vulnerable to cyber-attacks, particularly lesser-known attacks on IT systems. domain names (DNS).
DNS attacks
Since DNS is open by design, it is one of the easiest elements of a network for cybercriminals to target. With DNS attacks, hackers can obtain sensitive data and cause application downtime. Data from EfficientIP's 2018 Global DNS Report revealed that the majority (96%) of public sector organizations have experienced a DNS attack in the last 12 months, with 33% of them. He faced an average of 20 attacks. The study also showed that 24% of UK public sector organizations have been stripped of their intellectual property as a direct result of DNS attacks. Companies have already understood the value of their data and it is time for universities and other public sector organizations to do the same.