Cyber security and insurance provider, Coalition, is encouraging educational establishments to use a free online security scanning tool to check their internet security.

According to the UK Government’s Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2022, 41% of primary schools and 70% of secondary schools had suffered at least one cyber attack in 2021. Of the schools attacked, phishing was the most common form of incident, followed by impersonation attempts and viruses. The report noted that schools do not necessarily stand apart from the typical business in terms of the kinds of breaches and attacks they are reporting.

Tom Draper, Coalition’s head of insurance in the UK, said: “We know that most British schools and public sector entities can’t afford to buy cyber insurance or top-line cyber security. But by using Coalition Control, they can get an accurate picture of what security weaknesses a hacker can see in their system within a couple of minutes, and easily understand if any data, like passwords, may have leaked onto the web.”

The tool, Coalition Control, scans all the parts of an organisation that face the internet to give a ‘hacker’s eye view’ of security, going on to provide a report listing any security vulnerabilities and their severity.

Founded in the US in 2017, Coalition has since expanded to Canada and launched in the UK last September. Founder and CEO Joshua Motta was a former CIA operative and was invited to the White House to discuss cyber security with president Joe Biden in 2021.

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