More than one million euros will be made available to provide additional protection for schools against cyber attacks.

Ben Weyts, Flemish Minister of Education, will release 1.2 million euros to protect schools against cyberattacks. Digital progress in education is inevitably accompanied by an increasing risk of cyber threats. Better monitoring software and a response team with IT specialists are the first steps towards better protection against cyberattacks in education.

“We should not be naive”

Schools are increasingly working with digital solutions. Digisprong brings with it new challenges in the area of ​​cyber security. In order to give schools the right ammunition in the fight against cyber attacks, Flemish Education Minister Ben Weyts wants better monitoring software and a response team with ICT specialists who can immediately support schools in the event of a cyber attack. Weyts is making 1.2 million euros available for this purpose.

This is intended to provide schools with better protection, for example from students who want to hack their own school, cybercriminals looking for sensitive information, and foreign powers seeking to destabilize democracy.

Weyts: “We should not be naive: schools can become targets. Sometimes it’s about a student who wants to increase his own score, but there are also cybercriminals who want to steal personal data and hackers who want to paralyze as many systems as possible. Our schools had to become more digital, but they should not become less secure.”