Recognising the growing risks posed by cyber threats, the Department of Education (DfE) first introduced standards on cyber security and resilience in 2022. These guidelines have subsequently been updated twice – in May 2024 and January 2025.
Having developed the initial framework in collaboration with the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the first update aimed to make the standards more accessible to staff. The most recent change introduced Cyber Essentials certification to replace the mandatory IT health check framework for colleges and special post-16 institutions (SPIs).
The DfE standards provide essential measures that schools and colleges should take to protect sensitive data, ensure operational continuity, and prevent cyber incidents. As the UK’s leading data protection partner in the education sector, Redstor is perfectly placed to ensure compliance.
The guidelines set out key security measures that all educational institutions should adopt. These include:
Educational institutions should conduct a full cyber risk assessment at least once a year. The assessment should:
Redstor’s solution: Our automated risk management tools help schools conduct and maintain risk assessments, providing real-time insights into vulnerabilities and threats.
Cyber security must be a leadership priority, not just an IT concern. The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) should:
Redstor’s solution: Our user-friendly platform bridges the gap between IT teams and senior leadership. Redstor’s centralised management console enables non-technical staff to monitor security status, keeping leadership actively involved in cyber resilience planning.
Cyber Essentials provides a baseline level of security. Schools are encouraged to adhere to its five key controls:
Redstor’s solution: Our services meet all five controls. We offer secure data transmission and storage without interfering with existing firewall protections, built-in best practices to reduce risks associated with misconfigurations, and customisable access permissions to prevent unauthorised access to sensitive data. Redstor also provides malware detection scans for backup data to detect, isolate, and neutralise threats and cloud-based services to ensure automatic updates.
Schools must train staff and students on cyber security best practices, including:
To minimise downtime in the event of an attack, schools should:
Redstor’s solution: Our InstantData™ technology ensures rapid recovery in seconds. We also provide cloud-based backups that comply with the DfE’s 3-2-1 backup rule.
Sensitive student and staff data must be safeguarded through:
Redstor’s solution: We use immutable backups to prevent data tampering or ransomware encryption, MFA to enhance access security, and encrypted cloud storage to safeguard student and staff information.
To protect school networks, institutions should:
Redstor’s solution: Our endpoint protection features help schools maintain secure networks by preventing unauthorised application use. We also support network segmentation strategies to separate staff and student access and provide real-time threat detection across all endpoints.
With the rise of remote learning, secure cloud storage and video conferencing tools must be used to:
Redstor’s solution: We ensure secure access controls for cloud storage platforms and provide real-time monitoring of suspicious remote access attempts. Our platform also offers compliance with security best practices for third-party educational tools.
The DfE’s guidelines provide a clear roadmap for schools and colleges to strengthen their cyber defences. Implementing these measures will reduce cyber risks, safeguard sensitive data, and maintain learning environments for students and staff alike. The DfE sets the standards for cyber resilience in the UK education sector. Redstor sets the standard in compliance.
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