Security Issues in Digital Learning Spaces

Abstract

Since the advent of COVID-19, most schools and universities have adopted online courses to reduce the spread of the virus. However, they failed to address security issues adequately in a rush to embrace digital learning platforms. Unfortunately, the platforms used for online courses collect and generate data that attracts hackers. Also, cyberattacks have been increasing since the advent of COVID-19. Therefore, it is essential to outline digital learning spaces' security issues to find solutions to ensure learners' and teachers' safety. This paper discusses vulnerabilities and cyberattacks and their impacts on digital learning spaces. We used the classification of the most common web application vulnerabilities presented by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) and Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE). In addition to the technical risks, this paper also highlights management and user operational risks caused by human errors and ignorance. Furthermore, we performed a comparative study on the vulnerabilities of the most used Learning management Systems (LMS) and video conferencing tools. The study revealed that Moodle is the most vulnerable to attacks, Blackboard is the most secure among LMSs, and Zoom is the most secure among video conferencing tool.