In Cybersecurity Awareness Month, stay vigilant and cover your Google Workspace defence line from young insider intruders.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Did you know that hackers attacking schools are increasingly the same age as the students?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To be more precise, they are sometimes students at the same school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With cybersecurity attacks having recently become commonplace for educational institutions, they must also be prepared to face this challenge from within. Acting for various reasons, teenage hackers can exploit school systems, devices, and accounts, putting confidential data at risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s explore what this new challenge for Google admins involves and how to discourage young cyberattackers from targeting your school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between 2022 and 2024, teenagers were responsible for 57% of school data breaches in the UK<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Interesting fact: they usually hacked their own schools.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most common method for accessing confidential school information was not breaking in, but simply entering the correct user passwords. Teenagers just guess them or find them written down on paper. They also take advantage of staff mistakes, such as leaving unlocked devices, sharing data with personal devices, and improper data access settings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While students admit to trying to hack school systems for fun or out of rivalry,<\/a> these challenges, when successful, can cause severe damage. The costs of restoring critical school infrastructure, stopping the further public disclosure of private data, and recovering school reputation aren\u2019t so funny, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Young hackers are often open-minded and able to experiment with unconventional methods, sometimes lacking in ethics and imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In September 2025<\/a>, two 17-year-olds attacked a chain of nurseries in London. They stole names, pictures and addresses of 8.000 children and parents and then posted some of them publicly, demanding a \u00a3600,000 ransom. The attack has been described as \u201ca new low\u201d <\/a>in cybercrime. Fortunately, it finally took an unexpected turn: teenagers withdrew their claims and deleted all files. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Data breaches that compromise children’s personal data cause outrage among parents, politicians, and local communities. This is especially true when unscrupulous hackers extort an institution into paying a ransom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In June 2025<\/a>, a 19-year-old hacker from Massachusetts pleaded guilty to taking part in the largest student data breach in history. A few months earlier, as a part of a hacking group, he stole the sensitive data of 60 million students and 10 million educators from the edtech company PowerSchool. The ransom demand was nearly $ 3 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t the first cybercrime committed by Matthew Lane. Motivated just by the desire for profit, he had been involved since high school in attacking a school athletic association and seven other targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Students-hackers can be \u201cjust playing around\u201d or having much more malicious purposes. Whatever their motivations are, no school wants to be their new target. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, until you understand what that unusual action inside your domain was about, it may be too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t wait until your school\u2019s sensitive data is in real danger. Be a few steps ahead of young cyber ninjas and take proactive actions to protect your Google domain. We prepared a list of crucial tasks for the school admin to close up security gaps and prevent dangerous data breach attempts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before we discuss specific solutions to improve your children’s safeguarding, we need to identify the current state of your Google domain protection. A comprehensive audit of your digital environment will reveal your weaknesses and help you create a roadmap to fix them. Think as a potential hacker: <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Your Action:<\/mark><\/b> <\/p>\n\n\n\n View GAT+\u2019s One Click Reports<\/a> to get the current overview of the most common auditing areas<\/strong>. They include documents shared in or out, recently changed files, top-downloaded files, user login reports, geolocations of all Drive activity, suspended account risk reviews, and much more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Additionally, for ongoing control of potential risks, start monitoring the online activity<\/strong> of all your users and devices in real-time with GAT Shield<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say that a student finds an abandoned Chromebook in the school\u2019s storage. After breaking in, he discovers that the user who logged in had access to the old school principal\u2019s office Drive. The young hacker is messing around with files. After finding the principal\u2019s personal notes on teachers, he devises a plan to exploit them\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Accounts and devices that haven\u2019t been used for a while can be a highway for internal hackers to access confidential data. Ensure that all old accounts and devices have been archived, rather than tempting someone at school to check what data they may hide inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your Action:<\/mark><\/b> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Identify inactive user accounts <\/a><\/strong>with a last login date older than 30 days. Automatically suspend or delete them in bulk using GAT Flow (schedule<\/a> this action when offboarding each user to have one less task to worry about).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Detect inactive devices<\/a> with time-based alerts.<\/strong> Don\u2019t forget to deprovision unused ChromeOS devices. If you need to disable many of them (e.g., after the end of the school year), you can do so in bulk using GAT+.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\nFrom Teen Pranks To Real Crimes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When Attacks by Young Hackers Are Simply Malicious<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
How to Address Insider Cybersecurity Threats at School with GAT Labs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Safeguard Children\u2019s Data from Internal Risks in Google Workspace<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Audit School Domain Security<\/b><\/h4><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n
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Disable Inactive Accounts and Devices to Lock Unauthorized Access<\/b><\/h4><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n