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Cyber score

Benchmarking and Improving School Cybersecurity

Overview

Cyber score is a free-to-use benchmarking tool designed specifically for the education sector. It provides school leaders, IT managers, and governors with a clear, actionable framework for measuring, improving, and sustaining cybersecurity resilience.

Unlike generic security audits, Cyber score is tailored to education-specific standards, helping you move beyond a simple "number" to a strategic roadmap for your school or school group.

Dashboard

How it Works

Our cyber score helps schools build safer digital environments by providing a clear, actionable framework for measuring, improving, and sustaining cybersecurity resilience.

By using cyber score statements to guide your actions, you will reduce cybersecurity risks and foster best practices based on your most relevant guidance and standards. It's the easiest way to measure and improve a school's cyber resilience.  

It sets out a long-term vision for all schools to provide a safe and secure learning environment, and ensures that no pupil’s education is interrupted by a cyber-attack.

The Cyber score framework is built around three core pillars: Benchmark, Improve, and Prepare.

1. Benchmark

To get started, you will answer a series of straightforward "one-click" statements. These are divided into three essential categories:

  • Planning & Preparation: Assessing your policies, incident response plans, and governance.
  • Internal Systems: Reviewing technical controls like MFA, backups, and device management.
  • External to the school: Evaluating the security of your vendors and third-party connections.
2. Improve

Once you have completed your assessment, Cyber score generates a progression path. Instead of just identifying gaps, it provides:

  • Actionable Insights: Clear steps on what to tackle immediately vs what to plan for the long term.
  • Structured ‘Tracks’: Guidance developed by educationalists to keep your school on the "happy path" of continuous improvement.
  • Resource Allocation: Data to help you talk to stakeholders in terms of budgets and risk, rather than just technical tickets.
3. Prepare

Cyber score is built around the standards and frameworks your schools already need to achieve, including:

  • UK: DfE Cyber Security Standards, Cyber Essentials, NCSC Questions for Governors, and Risk Protection Arrangement (RPA).
  • Australia: Essential Eight.
  • US: NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, Texas Cybersecurity Framework, SB820, and more state-specific standards.

Key Benefits

  • Free for Everyone: The Foundations tier of Cyber score is free for all schools, whether or not you are a Secure Schools customer.
  • Evidence for Governance: Use the generated reports to demonstrate your cyber posture to governors, trustees, the board, or insurers.
  • No Technical Jargon: Statements are written for school business managers and leadership teams, not just IT experts.

Getting Started

  1. Log in to the Secure Schools Platform.
  2. Navigate to the Cyber score tab from the main dashboard.
  3. Begin answering the statements in the Planning & Preparation category.
  4. Invite team members (such as your IT lead or Data Protection Officer) to contribute their expertise to specific sections.

Cyber score answering

In addition, you can add or remove specific "tracks" for your organisation as needed. To change yours:

  1. Scroll down on the right-hand side under Expectations & achievements

  2. Click on View all to take you to the configuration page

  3. Here you'll see the tracks broken out into two groups:
    • Expectations
      The standards and frameworks schools like yours are expected to meet in your region, and are automatically completed as you work through the statements.
    • Achievements
      These are optional standards and frameworks for schools like yours in your region.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is my data private?

Yes. Your specific answers are used only to generate your school's report. If benchmarking data is shared, it is always anonymised and aggregated at a national or local level.

How often should we update our Cyber score?

Cybersecurity is not a "set and forget" task. We recommend reviewing your statements at least once each term or semester, or whenever you implement a major new system or policy.

Does a high score mean we are 100% secure?

No tool can guarantee 100% security. Cyber score is a tool for reducing risk and building resilience. It helps you implement best practices that mitigate the most common threats facing schools today.

My score suddenly dropped; why did that happen?

Certain statements within your Cyber score rely on being regularly reviewed and updated. As such, these will expire after a period of one year and will need to be reviewed and reaffirmed if still valid.