Harborough village school awarded top accolade for its work in becoming secure against cybercriminals

A Harborough village school is celebrating being handed a top accolade after pulling out all the stops to become secure against cybercriminals.

Husbands Bosworth CE Primary School in Husbands Bosworth near Market Harborough has achieved Cyber Essentials Certification.

Cyber Essentials is a Government-backed scheme run by the National Cyber Security Centre which helps organisations guard against the most common cyber threats and demonstrate their commitment to cyber security.

Eight of Learn-Academies Trust’s 11 primary schools in South Leicestershire have successfully applied to take part in a pilot scheme run by the Department for Education which covers the costs of achieving the certification in schools.

A 2020 study by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport found that just 14 per cent of nearly 17,000 UK primary schools had knowledge of the cyber essentials standard.

Husbands Bosworth is one of fewer than 50 primary schools across the UK to have achieved the certification so far.

All of Learn-AT’s schools will be applying the same high standards across their operations.

To achieve the required standard, the school had to ensure that all of its systems were secure.

Staff did that by introducing measures such as multi-factor authentication on logins, setting up firewalls and ensuring that personal devices are used in a secure way when accessing school systems.

This will help to ensure that the school’s systems and data are as secure as they can be and minimise the risk of malicious attacks.

Learn-AT’s director of operations Wayne Burbidge said: “This is a great achievement for Learn Academies Trust and Husbands Bosworth CE Primary School.

“We have all heard about the massive increase in cybercrime over recent years - and this is now a constant concern for everyone in the education sector.

“At Learn-AT, we have greatly improved cybersecurity over the last few years to protect our schools’ computer systems and the very sensitive data they contain.”

He added: “The Cyber Essentials Certification is backed by the National Cyber Security Centre and is only granted after a detailed assessment of an organisation’s ability to withstand cyber-attacks.

“Getting this certification is a significant step forward.”