Surge in Cyberattacks Targeting UK Education Sector

• •UK education sector saw 19.3 million cyber intrusion attempts in 2026, a 67% increase.
• •Path traversal and directory manipulation attacks accounted for 10.2 million hits.
• •Ransomware incidents remain low, with only 36 reported events across the sector.

UK academic institutions are facing a significant increase in cyberattacks, with SonicWall reporting over 19.3 million medium and high-severity intrusion attempts in 2026, a 67% rise from 2025. The education sector accounted for 87% of these attacks, primarily targeting web-facing infrastructure. Path traversal and directory manipulation attacks were particularly prevalent, generating 10.2 million hits. Legacy vulnerabilities, such as the Apache Log4j2 Remote Code Execution, were notably exploited, affecting primary and secondary schools with around 660,000 hits. Despite the high number of intrusion attempts, ransomware incidents remain low, with only 36 events reported. A government report indicated that over 70% of secondary schools and nearly 90% of further education colleges experienced breaches in the past year. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) continues to provide resources to help institutions bolster their defenses.