Ahead of its forthcoming initial public offering, cybersecurity firm McAfee LLC remains busy with the launch today of a new bundle for the education sector.

The new products, McAfee Secure School Suites and McAfee MVISION Mobile Advanced, are being offered exclusively to McAfee’s education customers to ensure all devices are protected from threats such as ransomware and fileless attacks that use legitimate programs to infect a computer.

Designed to assist education institutions to gain operational efficiencies through a cloud-delivered, unified endpoint solution, the new suites are said to assist in reducing the cost of operations and complexity associated with keeping students safe online.

McAfee Secure School Suites and McAfee MVISION Mobile Advanced detects threats and vulnerabilities on devices, the networks students are connected to, the websites they visit and the applications that are downloaded. The suite offers enhanced remediation capabilities which allows customers to roll back a ransomware attack by restoring affected files and negating the need for system reimaging.

“We’ve made it a priority to protect educational outcomes, especially during the back-to-school season when we’re all trying to adjust to a new way of learning,” Anand Ramanathan, vice president of product management at McAfe,e said in a statement. “With McAfee Secure School Suites and McAfee MVISION Mobile Advanced, schools can protect the devices parents and teachers are utilizing in their classroom, regardless of whether they are online or not.”

Cyberattacks, including ransomware attacks have continued apace in 2020 with hacking groups taking advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Educational institutions have been targeted, including a ransomware attack on schools in Hartford, Connecticut, that delayed their reopening in September. In June, the University of California at San Francisco paid a $1.14 million ransom following an attack to regain access to encrypted data.

Ransomware attacks have also continued to grow in their sophistication. Speaking to SiliconANGLE’s theCUBE last month, Aamir Lakhani, lead researcher and Derek Manky, chief of security insights and global threat alliances at FortiGuard Labs, said that the most heavily targeted sectors for ransomware attackers were telecommunications, managed security service providers, government, education and technology.

“Hackers are getting smart; they’re trying to go after the backups as well,” Lakhani said. “A lot of corporations these days are not only paying the ransom, they’re also actually negotiating with the criminals as well. You want $10 million? How about $4 million?”

Image: McAfee