Ransomware and Office 365 for Education

In universities and schools, Windows-based systems and Office 365 remain dominant. Unfortunately, ransomware attacks in Office 365 are quite common as well.  

The collaborative capabilities of Office 365 make ransomware defense more challenging. Before Office 365, you wrote a Word document on your laptop, saved it on your system or file server, and then shared through email. Copies of the file could exist on your laptop, a file storage server, your sent email, and the inbox of the recipient.

Thanks to shared files and OneDrive sync, your files may be in more places than ever. A teacher that shares a syllabus with colleagues can end up with copies on multiple laptops. Each person with editing access might sync a copy to their system. When one person gets ransomware, their encrypted versions sync through to everyone else.

In fact, 29% of IT professionals reported that their clients had encountered ransomware that targeted Office 365. It takes one visit to a malicious site, one accidental download, or one infected attachment to unleash ransomware.