Caracterización de Ciberataques en Universidades: Análisis de una muestra por conglomerados de Cobertura Mediática

Abstract

Introduction: The progressive digitalization of educational institutions has experienced a remarkable increase in recent years, this progress is accompanied by new challenges, among them cybersecurity, given that as institutions increase the use and offer of online services, they also increase the exposure of their data and information to situations related to cybercrime. Objective: To characterize cyberattacks on universities through a systematic review of media coverage found through a cluster sample in different combinations of online search. Methodology: This mixed-approach study conducted a systematic review of different combinations of online retrieval, using the Seven-Step Method. The analysis included qualitative and quantitative techniques. Purposive cluster sampling generated 560 direct results and 8 crawl results. The final sample from the study criteria was established in 66 media coverage of cyber-attacks on university institutions. Results: 45 cyberattacks on educational institutions within the period 2008-2023 were characterized, allowing to establish a general characterization from 11 categories of analysis, establishing moderate correlations between the author and the type of information exposed during the cyberattack. Conclusions:  The cyberattacks in the sample, are characterized by being of unknown authorship, intentional, concentrating in European countries. Depending on the type of attack, they are usually Ransomware or Data Leakage, and integrate others by way of backdoors. Their impact includes, among others: economic losses, data exposure, damage to institutional prestige and closure of the institution.