Tag: universities

Business World

Indian students in Australia eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine

Feb 17, 2021 by Neel Achary 0 Comments #Indian students, #universities

Sydney/India, February 16th, 2021: Indian students and universities have warmly welcomed the news that Indian students living in Australia will be eligible to receive the Covid-19 vaccine when the rollout begins during February.

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt made clear international students were an important part of the country’s vaccination strategy which aims to give as many people as possible access to the vaccine. “We need to make sure that everybody who’s on Australian soil is safe, and everybody who’s on Australian soil has access to protection. That means the government will provide Covid-19 vaccinations free to all visa holders in Australia.”

The announcement follows confirmation by the U.K. government that international students will be eligible for its own vaccine rollout.

Commenting on the announcement, Director of leading pathway provider Study Group Australia and a strong sector advocate for a coordinated welcome for international students, Alex Chevrolle said: “This is excellent news for Indian and all of the international students in our Study Centres across Australia and for the 520,000 international student visa holders who have been living and studying in Australia throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Vaccines have a crucial role to play in getting the country back to normal and to reopening our borders to Indian students who are keen to continue their education and to progress to undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in our excellent universities. While this has been a truly challenging time for Indian students and education providers, Australia education has gone to tremendous efforts to shift study online and to support students to the best of their ability. Now we are all looking forward to doing what it takes to strengthen this important activity for students and for the wider Australian economy.”

Australia has secured 150 million doses of various vaccines, with the roll out commencing in coming weeks with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, subject to final approval by the country’s Therapeutic Goods Administration. The country also has agreements to take the Oxford-AstraZeneca, Novavax and COVAX Facility vaccines subject to completion of successful clinical trials and approval.

The Australian government concluded: “We look forward to welcoming international students in a COVIDSafe way when it is safe to do so. A range of factors including vaccination status will be considered for international arrivals to ensure protection of international students and the Australian community.”

About Study Group:

Study Group partners with 39 universities worldwide, to deliver academic pathway programmes (e.g., Foundation Year, International Year 1/Diploma and Pre-Masters courses), which broaden access to high-quality, global Higher Education opportunities for thousands of international students every year, across all subject areas.

Over the past 25 years, we have established a market-leading position in the international education sector, with the highest number of partners within the global top 200 university ranking located in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the US. Our partners include leading ‘Russell Group’ UK universities and ‘Group of Eight’ Australian Higher Education Institutions. In February this year, Study Group acquired Insendi to enhance the organisation’s education technology expertise and deliver transformative experiential, intuitive and accessible online learning experiences for students with the best, most pedagogically powerful digital tools available.

Business World

More than 1,000 schools, colleges and universities were attacked between June and September; highlight latest Barracuda Threat report

Oct 30, 2020 by Gouri Achary 0 Comments #Barracuda Networks, #colleges, #Murali Urs, #security solutions, #universities

Barracuda Networks, a trusted partner and a leading provider of cloud-enabled security solutions, has detected a new wave of spear-phishing attacks targeting the education sector, as institutions continue to operate online. The researchers evaluated over 3.5 million spear-phishing attacks executed on various sectors, including those that were solely aimed at the education sector, affecting more than 1,000 schools, colleges, and universities. Spear phishing is a personalized phishing attack that targets a specific organization or individual. Over the years, cybercriminals have rapidly evolved and continue to adopt more innovative styles of attacks against different sectors, including education.

The Threat Spotlight further revealed that educational institutions are more than twice as vulnerable to a carefully-crafted business email compromise (BEC) attack than an average organization. Using this form of attack, threat actors have taken hold of schools, resulting in devastating losses. While the scale of attacks dropped by 10-14% during summer vacation (July and August), the number substantially picked up in September when students returned from holidays. The researchers also highlighted the advent of two more common types of attacks: email scams and service impersonation, against schools between July and September.

There was another stunning revelation in the report. Gmail accounts were the primary medium for cybercriminals to launch the aforementioned attacks – accounting for 86% of all BEC attacks on the education sector. Cybercriminals prefer to use well-known email providers like Gmail because they are free, easy to register and have a higher reputation in the market. They customized malicious email addresses using terms like ‘principal’, ‘head of the department’, ‘school’, and ‘president’ to make them look realistic. In fact, attackers even used convincing subject lines to quickly grab the victim’s attention and thus create a sense of urgency. Some of them include COVID-19 New Updates, COVID-19 School Meeting, COVID-19 Update, and Follow Up Right Now, among others.

Surprisingly, as per the analysis, of the total number of malicious messages detected (both inbound and outbound), 1 in 4 messages was sent from internal email accounts. This percentage was significantly higher for the education sector, with 57% of infectious emails sent from internal accounts. This means accounts in the education industry were used to send more attacks than they actually received. Since there was a high degree of trust associated with these compromised accounts due to their legitimacy, it was incredibly valuable for criminals who used them as a perfect launchpad for attacks.

Murali Urs, Country Manager-India, Barracuda Networks, said, “As schools and colleges continue to teach students remotely, it makes both the parties vulnerable to cyberattacks. Spear phishing has many forms as we saw in our latest threat report. While online teaching and learning is a crucial part of the new normal, it is also important for students and teachers to act mindfully before, during and post the online classes. Neither every system has updated antivirus protection, nor everyone is aware of how to respond to these attacks. Investing in the right cybersecurity solutions along with gaining proper knowledge on prevention methods is, therefore, the need of the hour.”

Prevention measures

To begin with, schools and colleges need to prioritize email security that leverages artificial intelligence to identify unusual senders and requests. This additional layer of defence on top of traditional email gateways will provide substantial protection against spear-phishing attacks for both staff and students. They must also invest in technology that will enable them to identify suspicious activities and potential signs of account takeover.

In addition, institutions should educate both staffers and students about email threats and how to recognize them, understand their nature, and finally report them. Security awareness training is all the more critical now because of the increasing reliance of educators and learners on email and other digital tools for communication and educational purposes.

On top of that, institutions must also establish and regularly review company policies to ensure that personal and financial information is handled safely, especially during wire transfers and payment changes. In-person/telephone confirmation or approval from multiple authorities for financial transactions can work wonders.