Classroom computer security: Protecting against hackers

These days, it seems that administrators must not only safeguard their classroom computers and networks from external threats like cybercriminals, but from internal dangers as well. Recently, several schools reported that students were able to hack into classroom computers or other systems to change their grades or carry out other purposes. For this reason, decision makers should employ monitoring technology and a reboot to restore solution to better protect devices and network resources from would-be student hackers.

In early February, students at the Grönkullaskolan school near Stockholm, Sweden, were caught after they broke into the school’s IT database to change their grades, prevent truancy notices from being sent to parents and lower the grades of students they did not like. In total, 31 students had grades altered by the three students after the individuals were able to infiltrate the institution’s intranet system. The institution is currently working with police to investigate the event, and teachers are being asked to compare their notes to posted grades to ensure the marks line up.

This is by no means the only time an occurrence of this kind has taken place. Toward the beginning of March, a student at Purdue University hacked into a professor’s computer to change his grades. The student, Roy Sun, was reportedly incredibly gifted and earned a legitimate A in one course despite only going to one class. Despite his talents, Sun said changing his grades was “easier…than going to class and working real hard.”

As students increasingly boost their technological abilities, schools must prevent these types of events from occurring. By implementing a computer monitoring program on individual classroom computers, as well as a network-level monitoring program, administrators can have better oversight of their resources. This software can also notify decision makers of any suspicious activity. Additionally, a computer restore program like Deep Freeze can ensure that if settings or content is changed by an individual, the machine is returned to the predetermined configurations upon restarting.