Indian educational institutions hit by over 2 lakh cyberattacks, 4 lakh data breaches in 9 months, reveals study
The study, titled "Exploring Cyber Threats and Digital Risks to Indian Educational Institutions", was conducted under CyberPeace Foundation's flagship e-Kawach initiative in collaboration with DELNET, Resecurity and Autobot Infosec.
It was released on Wednesday along with the launch of the "Cyber First Responder" initiative, aimed at equipping students, faculty, librarians and staff with skills to counter cyber threats, deepfakes and misuse of artificial intelligence.
Also read: CBSE conducts surprise inspections in 10 schools across five states and one UT
The nine-month study, conducted between July 2023 and April 2024, found more than 8,000 unique usernames and 54,000 unique passwords being used in brute-force attacks. Commonly targeted usernames included "root" and "admin", while weak passwords, such as "123456" and "password", were frequently attempted.
"Indian educational institutions are likely five times more vulnerable to data breaches than counterparts with stronger cyber practices," the report warned, adding that breaches could lead to impersonation of faculty, phishing attacks, deepfake content, theft of sensitive research data and leakage of exam papers.
Vice Chancellor of National Law University-Delhi Prof. (Dr) G S Bajpai said resilience in the digital era means transforming systems in response to a disruption.
DELNET director Dr Sangeeta Kaul called the Cyber First Responder initiative "a commitment to shaping, not just reacting to, change", while CyberPeace Foundation founder and global president Vineet Kumar described the report as a "wake-up call" for academic institutions.
"Digitisation without cybersecurity is like building a house without doors or locks. Innovation cannot thrive without resilience," Kumar said, adding that the programme aims to create a first line of defence against cyber threats and AI abuse in academia.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
18 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
ED freezes ₹110 crore linked to illegal betting platform Parimatch
MUMBAI: The Mumbai unit of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) has frozen ₹110 crore lying in mule bank accounts in connection with a money-laundering probe into Cyprus-based illegal betting platform Parimatch. The action followed coordinated searches at 17 locations across the country on Tuesday, including Mumbai, Surat, Delhi, Noida, Kanpur, Madurai and Hyderabad. ED freezes ₹ 110 crore linked to illegal betting platform Parimatch The platform, owned by a Ukrainian national abroad, allegedly amassed nearly ₹3,000 crore from Indian users in 2023-24 alone, luring them with promises of high returns before defrauding them, ED officials said on Thursday. According to investigators, the frozen funds—proceeds of crime—were parked in multiple mule accounts used to layer and divert money to various recipients. Searches also led to the seizure of incriminating documents, digital devices and 1,200 credit cards linked to mule accounts. Complex laundering network The ED's probe, based on a complaint by the cyber police station in Mumbai, has uncovered a multi-layered laundering operation. In south India, user deposits were allegedly funnelled into mule accounts and withdrawn in cash in parts of Tamil Nadu, before being handed to hawala operators. These operators then recharged virtual wallets of a UK-based firm, which were used to buy USDT cryptocurrency in mule accounts run by Parimatch agents. In western India, Parimatch allegedly used Domestic Money Transfer agents to collect betting funds in mule accounts and channel them back through credit card transactions. Investigators have also flagged payment companies whose Payment Aggregator licence applications were rejected by the Reserve Bank of India. These firms allegedly provided backend services to Parimatch disguised as Technology Service Providers (TSPs), offering Application Programming Interface (API) access to integrate mule accounts—often opened in the names of e-commerce and payment service firms—into the platform. The funds were then 'masked' as e-commerce refunds, vendor payments and other routine expenses to obscure their origin and movement, officials said. Aggressive promotion in India To attract customers, Parimatch invested heavily in marketing, sponsoring sports tournaments and tying up with celebrities. Indian-registered entities—'Parimatch Sports' and 'Parimatch News'—were allegedly used for surrogate advertising, funded through foreign remittances. A city - based businessman, who is the complainant in the Mumbai police's case, alleged that he had lost around ₹12.22 crore at the accused illegal platform and its allied applications due to their 'non adherence to fairplay'. The businessman claimed he got attracted to the accused gaming platform's claims related to high returns, sometime in 2021, after noticing its advertisements and celebrity endorsements for it on a social media platform. 'All of us who have lost any money on the accused platform should be compensated,' the complainant told HT.
The Hindu
2 hours ago
- The Hindu
Islands of excellence amid a morass of stuttering institutions
78 Years of Freedom Pointing to the monkey frolicking outside his room, V. Kamakoti, Director, IIT-Madras, said even the monkey in IIT wants to learn only Machine Learning. His observation may point to where Indian higher education is poised nearly eight decades after Independence. In India today, a bunch of top-level and highly acclaimed institutions produce brilliant and well-equipped minds eager to delve into the latest. But after the so-called Tier 1 institutions, there is a steep fall in quality in Tier 2 and 3 — the vast majority of India's engineering institutions catering to lakhs of students who might be as eager as the IITians to learn cutting-edge concepts but are just not up to the mark. For instance, V. Madhosh Kumar is a rideshare cab driver in Chennai. He says this is a temporary job that will help him find his bearings in Chennai. He has an engineering degree in AI and ML from a college near Coimbatore. Madhosh wanted to know if doing a course on network security would boost his job prospects that appeared nil. 'My professors had little clue and much of what we students learned was self-learning,' he said, adding recruiters don't seem interested in him. Madhosh did have a LinkedIn profile but it indicated little engagement with companies that may be interested to employ him. He said he did upload his college project on GitHub but it had been downloaded only once. Madhosh was clearly not employable. The situation in engineering may apply to other streams as well — a few elite institutions and then an abyss in quality. Poor quality is endemic across India's education — basic and higher. And it's only now that it has caught the attention and getting the focus it has always deserved from policymakers. Some 15 years ago, the Annual Status of Education Reports (ASER) were received with deathly silence, especially on the part of the government. These reports showed that by Class 6, the average student's literacy and math skills are likely that of a Class 3 student. When he is leaving middle school, the average student is likely at the level of Class 6. In 2009-10, students from two of India's most educationally advanced States, Tamil and Himachal Pradesh, participated in the Programme for International Student Assessment conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Kyrgyzstan was the only country that ranked lower than India. Across India, postgraduates struggle to write a three-sentence paragraph in any language. Many get cheated on the interest they need to pay on loans they have taken because they just don't know the math. In the book India Is Broken, Ashoka Mody writes about how, unlike in Japan, Jawaharlal Nehru's programme for boosting farm productivity failed. His land reforms weren't implemented properly with the average farmer having little long-term stake in the farms. Further, India's farmers were not literate and aware enough to make use of agriculture extension services. Sub-opitmal delivery As ASER reports kept coming, after a point, governments were forced to take notice. Their schools were just not performing. In a report, NITI Aayog notes that quality deficiency in Indian school education is caused by sub-optimal delivery structures (sub-scale schools, large scale teacher vacancies), and weak organisation structures, governance, and limited accountability (poorly defined organisational structure, ineffective systems, process and accountability). Change has to happen in all three areas. 'For change to scale across the State and to sustain, it is essential to anchor it within the State and not have it led from outside,' the study notes. India Is Broken talks about how India's planners, right from Independence, just did not pay attention to the quality of education delivered by government primary schools even as they were setting up the high performing higher education institutions. And that told on the literacy and math skills of the average Indian. Well into the 1990s, Mody says, as India achieved near-universal enrolment in primary schools, the problem of quality couldn't be wished away. The RTE Act played a role in creating the basic infrastructure, even if the implementation was patchy. And the NEP 2020, for the first time in a government document, acknowledges the severe deficiency in Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, says Balaji Sampath, education activist who has helped to conduct the ASER surveys. Now there is a consensus across India regarding quality of education after the dots have been connected. Poor quality of basic and higher education leads to deficiency in labour productivity — India's labour productivity is 20% of Malaysia's. And poor labour productivity is among the key contributors to why India just doesn't seem to be reaping the demographic dividend that it deserves. Meanwhile, with the IT boom, engineered outside of government planning and intent, the opening up of the economy expanded the service sector spearheaded by IT growth. Now, India hopes that a consequence of this growth will help India go back and complete the circle — high technology as a low-cost solution to the problem of quality. A typically Indian jugaad for fixing a chronic problem. The NEP 2020 does talk about tech and its facilitators such as the concept of self-learning. Mr. Kamakoti of IIT-Madras sees it as a question of reaching the best learning resources to every student in villages and cities through technology. 'It's natural that very accomplished teachers may not be willing to go to villages. The number of teachers available to take up jobs is limited,' he says. He cites the Swayam platform of video classes helmed by IIT professors to emphasize how video can reach quality learning resources over Internet. He talks about interesting translation projects driven by AI that will translate the content to more than 20 languages. 'There are tools to make the sessions more interesting. Animation, virtual reality can help explain subtle, detailed concepts in an intricate manner,' says Mr. Kamakoti who sees the quality problem as essentially the problem of not having enough skilled, high quality teachers as well as learning resources. 'Today, the entire school chemistry lab can be done through Google. All of Class 10 experiments can be done through Google and tests conducted using virtual reality,' he says, adding that scaling up such initiatives is the way to go. Video learning is far superior to conventional classroom learning from just the teacher, says Marmar Mukhopadhyay, education management expert. He recalls an experiment he did in Gujarat where he made a video with still photographs and voiceover on the Gujarat earthquake. He did three types of sessions: in one the teacher played the video from beginning to end; in the second the teacher operated the controls as asked by students; and in the third the videos were given to the students. Learners were asked to write interpretative essays on earthquakes in Japan and the experience of the students' elders with earthquakes. He says the students who were given the videos did best in the assessment and all students scored nearly 80%. Marmar looks at AI as changing the role of the teacher from instructor to facilitator of self-learning, largely. Learning to learn is more important than the learning itself, he says, adding the teacher's job is to create learning opportunities. Choosing the right tech But does tech deliver? Rukmini Banerjii, CEO of Pratham Education Foundation that conducts the ASER surveys, emphasises the importance of field studies and randomised control trials to asses which types of tech can deliver and to what extent. Meanwhile, Sweden had a blowback when the new Conservative government in 2023 sought to roll back digitisation of education programme of the previous government. Swedish neuro-researchers published many papers discussing the negative impact of screentime, fall in socialising among teens, etc. This came after nearly 15 years of digital-first approach to education. 'The reliance on digital tools has led to a lack of critical thinking and overconfidence in online sources,' said Sweden's Minister of Education, Lotta Edholm. The Swedish government has sought to go back to providing printed textbooks to all students for all subjects and in-person classes. Research has indeed shown that students retain more information from print. The sensory experience of flipping through the pages and the absence of distractions does seem to facilitate deep understanding. Yet, while Sweden may be spoiled for choices, India's needs are dire in a resource-starved environment. Several studies by The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), however, bear out the benefits of use of tech. For instance, one study relying on evidence from 126 randomized evaluations shows that educational software that helps students learn at their own pace deliver. Technology nudges such as message reminders work. Combining in-person and online can work although students in in-person-only courses perform better than those in online-only courses. A targeted, phone-tutoring programme to improve Math by J-PAL South Asia, along with NGOs Youth Impact and Alokit, is being implemented in Karnataka by the government. The programme had been validated in Botswana. The target is to reach more than 4.5 lakh students between grades 3 and 5. For more than a decade now, various States have sought to leverage tech to improve education reach and quality with mixed results. Experts say that AI's ability to personalisze learning could help fix a uniquely Indian problem — teachers are far too burdened with teaching an array of things and concepts, cover the portions, rather, as well as with administrative work. They simply cannot ensure every student has grasped the fundamentals. With student-teacher ratios still a challenge, personal care continues to suffer that AI can execute at low-cost. Mr. Kamakoti notes that the planned Center of Excellence in AI coming under the Ministry of Education can help draw up a nationwide roadmap on AI use. Primary students can submit their worksheets for Language and Math practice every day across the year to an AI System for auto-evaluation to provide teachers and parents with learner data analysis and deliver a personalised practice work that progressively is personalised to the individual learner's skill situation, says Bhanu Potta, EdTech expert focused on social investments and achieving sustainable development goals. Such AI-supported use cases can be built and deployed at large-scale for millions of learners, at a fiscal allocation of Rs. 1,000 per year or less considering the running costs and upfront costs amortised for five years when built on sovereign models, he adds. Viplav Baxi, an education professional with over 30 years of experience in education-technology, says experience has shown that our top-down 'educratic' systems across the world have created similar challenges for teachers. Teachers are our force multiplier and it's time to blend approaches that celebrate and encourage local scale autonomy. 'We must provide them all the necessary resources and tools to help them become more effective and efficient,' he says, adding teachers are indispensable and they provide the last mile delivery.
Time of India
4 hours ago
- Time of India
Unlox introduces AI powered learning ecosystem with IoT devices, virtual labs
Unlox has launched an integrated learning platform combining AI-driven guidance, dedicated hardware, and cloud-based virtual labs. The initiative is designed to address gaps in accessibility, personalization, and practical skill-building in higher education and professional to market projections, the global EdTech sector is expected to reach USD 404 billion by 2025, with AI-enabled adaptive learning emerging as a central feature. In India, industry estimates suggest that 150 million professionals will require reskilling by 2025, driving the need for flexible and outcome-focused training models. The Unlox framework is built on three components: Blu – AI Learning Companion Blu provides curriculum-linked assistance, adapting to individual learning patterns and offering real-time feedback. Its multi-language capability and round-the-clock availability are designed to enhance accessibility for diverse learner groups. Edu-let – Dedicated Learning Device Edu-let is a preconfigured tablet that supports offline access to course material, AI-enabled interaction, and personalized progress tracking. The model reflects an emerging trend in both education and enterprise settings toward secure, purpose-built devices for consistent user experience. Smart Labs – Cloud-Based Virtual Workspaces Smart Labs offer access to licensed industry software for coding, design, AI, and cybersecurity via a cloud-hosted environment. This approach mirrors enterprise adoption of cloud-based sandbox environments to enable skill development without the need for high-cost local infrastructure. The platform's design reflects broader shifts in digital learning and enterprise training: • AI adoption in Indian enterprises is rising, with 73% expected to expand usage in 2025. • Hybrid and blended models are becoming standard in both education and workplace training. • Cloud delivery remains a preferred model for scalability, modularity, and integration. By combining AI tools, dedicated devices, and virtualized lab environments, the platform supports both academic and vocational training needs. The approach is relevant for skill-building in technology-driven fields such as software engineering, AI, and cybersecurity.
