How Microsoft Helps Prevent Cyber Security Attacks in Schools

How Microsoft Addresses Cyber Security Concerns in Education

For several years now, Microsoft Education has introduced solutions that deliver their most significant product updates, designed to support your school. Microsoft Education helps by providing schools with technologies and education expertise to deliver opportunities for all learners worldwide. As threats are constantly looking for vulnerabilities in educational IT networks, schools have always been on the lookout for a security system reliable enough to cover their large network of students and other branches. Nowadays, as we move to the hybrid world of online education, educators, public health officials, and leaders across the globe contemplate their next move to adapt to the current environment. It has since been evident that remote learning will be an essential part of any successful reopening strategy. We’ve all come to accept that working and learning from home is here to stay. Among such conditions, several solutions surfaced, and Office 365 Education is perhaps the best one as it contains all the tools relevant for students and educators to transition into a virtual classroom

Schools are vulnerable to attacks due to students being uneducated about cyber threats such as malicious links and phishing emails. Students are a great target for the threats in the school as they access their files and data from multiple computers connected within the school

Schools also hold a lot of personal information for students and staff including education information, medical information and exam results which need to be processed and protected.

Microsoft Office 365 for Education

For decades, Microsoft Office apps have been the default when it comes to productivity, especially in school and educational institutions. A lot of people, students, and faculty still turn to Microsoft Word for creating and editing documents, while Microsoft Excel and Microsoft PowerPoint remain the go-to when it comes to managing spreadsheets or producing presentations needed for their day-to-day tasks

Microsoft 365 Education provides software solutions for enhancing classroom productivity, enhancing learning outcomes, achieving objectives, and saving time and money for school administrators, teachers, IT staff, and students.

Get the Microsoft 365 Solution That’s Right for your Organisation

All Microsoft 365 plans are filled with features that enable educators and students to achieve more, wherever they are teaching and learning, and are created exclusively for the educational sector. How can this work for you?

Microsoft 365 A1

To accommodate all students using desktop applications like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams, and other programs, there is a one-time per device solution. Additionally, to save you time, this license offers cloud administration using Microsoft Intune for Education, which can control all of your devices from a single dashboard

How much does Microsoft 365 A1 cost? For students, it’s free! And it comes with popular apps like Outlook, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote so teachers and students can collaborate and work together, communicate, and create superb content.

Microsoft 365 A3

With a user-based license that covers everything in the Microsoft 365 A1 license along with extra capabilities like bookings and live events, you can now instruct and learn from any location. Additionally, the Microsoft 365 A3 plan offers advanced security, management and analytics

How much does Microsoft 365 A3 cost? For students, it’s £3.58, while for teachers, faculty and staff, it’s £4.85 per user per month. It has all the features in A1 plus full access to the Office desktop apps and additional management and security tools.

Microsoft 365 A5

Add Microsoft’s most advanced security, mobility, management, and compliance to your school subscription and prioritize safety with Microsoft Defender which contains all of Microsoft’s 365 A3’s teaching and learning tools

How much does Microsoft 365 A5 cost? For students, it’s £6.74 while for teachers, faculty and staff, it’s £9.06 per user per month. It has all the features in A3 plus Microsoft’s best-in-class intelligent security management, advanced compliance, and analytics systems.

Schools now have access to Microsoft 365 A1 licenses for free, but they can purchase Microsoft A3 and A5 licenses at a reduced price compared to enterprise licenses. By purchasing the Microsoft A3/A5 licenses they get access to additional services and features. Microsoft A5 licenses provide access to Microsoft Defender platforms which protect students and teachers from malware, ransomware, phishing, and other cyber threats. Let us now look into detail at each of these Microsoft Defender platforms in this feature comparison:

	Microsoft 365 A1	Microsoft 365 A3	Microsoft 365 A5
Microsoft 365 apps	Included	Included	Included
Calendar	Included	Included	Included
SharePoint Plan 2 (10 GB storage1, unlimited OneDrive storage)	–	Included	Included
Microsoft Teams	Included	Included	Included
Phone System	–	–	Included
Classroom experience in Microsoft Teams	Included	Included	Included
Power Apps for Microsoft 365	Included	Included	Included
Viva Learning in Teams	Included	Included	Included
Microsoft Defender for Endpoint	–	–	Included
Microsoft Defender for Identity	–	–	Included
Microsoft Intune for Education	Included	Included	Included

Microsoft 365 Education is a tool being used in schools and institutions. All of the plans were created with the goal of education in mind and are brimming with tools that enable teachers and students to succeed more, wherever they teach and learn. Let us look into the different Microsoft 365 for Education licenses outlined here and see which one can be beneficial for us in terms of collaboration.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint

Microsoft Defender is an enterprise endpoint security platform designed to help enterprise networks prevent, detect, investigate and respond to certain security threats.

Defender for Endpoint uses the following combination of technology built into Windows 10 and Microsoft’s robust cloud service:

Endpoint behavioral sensors: Embedded in Windows 10, these sensors collect and process behavioral signals from the operating system and send this sensor data to your private, isolated, cloud instance of Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.
Cloud security analytics: Leveraging big-data, device learning, and unique Microsoft optics across the Windows ecosystem, enterprise cloud products (such as Office 365), and online assets, behavioral signals are translated into insights, detections, and recommended responses to advanced threats.

Threat intelligence: Generated by Microsoft hunters, security teams, and augmented by threat intelligence provided by partners, threat intelligence enables Defender for Endpoint to identify attacker tools, techniques, and procedures, and generate alerts when they are observed in collected sensor data.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud

Microsoft Defender for Cloud is a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Cloud Workload Protection Platform (CWPP) for all of your Azure, on-premises, and multi-cloud (Amazon AWS and Google GCP) resources. Defender for Cloud fills three key needs as you manage the security of your resources and workloads in the cloud and on-premises:

Defender for Cloud secure score continually assesses your security posture so you can track new security opportunities and precisely report on the progress of your security efforts.

Defender for Cloud recommendations secures your workloads with step-by-step actions that protect your workloads from known security risks.
Defender for Cloud alerts defends your workloads in real-time so you can react immediately and prevent security events from developing.

Microsoft Defender for Office 365 (Plan2)

As educational institutions feel the need to upgrade their security and protect their organisations against sophisticated threats and attacks, Microsoft Defender for Office 365 offers advanced threat protection.

Want to learn more about how Microsoft Defender for Office 365 P2 can help?

It has Defender for Office 365 Plan 1 capabilities, plus:

Automation, investigation, remediation, and education capabilities:

Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 offers everything in Plan 1 plus advanced threat hunting, automation, attack simulation training, and cross-domain XDR capabilities.

Protection against advanced attacks, such as phishing, malware, spam, and business email compromise
Protection beyond email (Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Office apps)
Internal email protection
Detailed reporting

Advanced threat hunting
Automated investigation and response
Attack simulation training
Microsoft 365 Defender (XDR) capabilities, such as cross-domain hunting and incident correlation

Schools using Defender for Office 365 Plan 2 can run their own phishing simulations for students and staff to educate them on the dangers of email attacks like phishing and spoofing.

If you want to learn more about the products included in Microsoft 365 and explore alternative subscription and licensing options for Microsoft Office and Windows, contact our Wizard IT experts today.

How Microsoft Helps Prevent Cyber Security Attacks In Schools