Analysis of Critical Factors Influencing E-Learning Platforms Security

COVID-19 impacted humankind's life and all sectors of activity, and the educational sector was not spared. Schools and universities closed and switched to online or distance learning courses to deal with the virus's spread. The mass adoption of online course solutions has not been security-focused in response to the need for quick response. However, e-learning spaces or environments generate and store data that can attract hackers. In this article, we identified and analyzed critical factors or metrics that can significantly affect e-learning environment security. These factors are login session time and range, failed login attempts, user device type and operating system, different types of web browsers used, cyberattack statistics and user access locations. We also performed a case study of The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) online learning platform, to assess the impact of the identified factors. The case study findings revealed that NOUN's online learning platform is characterized by mobile learning; and the most used operating systems and web browsers are respectively Android, Windows, and iOS, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Although most of the platform's accesses obviously come from Nigeria, there are a few accesses from all over the world. NOUN online learning platform faces DoS attacks, SQL Injection and password attacks. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to implement security measures that enhance the learning space security.