Device management app Mobile Guardian was recently removed from all students’ personal learning devices after a global cybersecurity breach affected about 13,000 secondary school students from 26 secondary schools in Singapore. It’s an application that enables parents to manage students’ device usage by restricting applications or websites and screen time.

These students had their devices wiped remotely by the perpetrator, leaving many worried as the GCE O’Level exams are nearing. 

Since then, the Education Ministry has been able to fully restore information on personal learning devices that were backed up on the cloud, but a small fraction of devices where information stored locally was not backed up, and hence not recoverable.

On this episode of Morning Shot, Benjamin Ang, Senior Fellow, Head of Centre of Excellence for National Security & Head of Digital Impact Research at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies shares his insights on how such incidents can be better mitigated, and how safeguards and recovery procedures can be beefed up.

Presented by: Emaad Akhtar 
Produced & Edited by: Yeo Kai Ting (ykaiting@sph.com.sg)
Photo credits: ST / Chua Kee Siong