The UK’s National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) has announced the launch of a new offering designed to prevent school users from visiting malicious websites.
PDNS for Schools is completely free and will be rolled out by next year, according to Sarah Lyons, NCSC deputy director for economy and society.
“This time frame will allow us to test the capacity of the service and ensure that we can provide a PDNS offering to different types of schools across the UK,” she explained.
PDNS for Schools is based on a long-standing and highly successful part of NCSC’s active cyber defense strategy: the Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS).
Implemented by the .uk Nominet registry in 2017, it is a recursive resolver that finds answers to DNS queries and blocks access to risky sites.
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“PDNS prevents access to domains known to be malicious, simply by not remediating them. Preventing access to malware, ransomware, phishing attacks, viruses, malicious sites and spyware at the source makes the network more secure,” the report said. NCSC.
“In addition, PDNS provides organizations that use it with metrics on the health of their networks and gives them access to NCSC local support to resolve any issues. PDNS data is also used to inform and support the UK Government’s cyber incident response functions in the event of a cyber attack.
The UK education sector certainly needs help. Recent NCSC Research published in January found that more than three-quarters (78%) of schools have experienced at least one type of cyber incident. A similar proportion (73%) said they had been victims of either phishing emails sent to staff or staff being directed to fraudulent websites, compared to 69% in the 2019 report.
As the new school year approaches which began last month, several schools reported major disruption after suspected ransomware attacks.
Those interested in using PDNS for schools do not need to do anything until a full rollout is announced in early 2024, the NCSC said.
In the meantime, local authorities in England and eligible public sector networks in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who provide DNS to their schools are encouraged to sign up to the service.