Between 2021 and 2022, 56 percent of K-12 education organizations were hit by ransomware, a nearly 25 percent increase from the previous year. That’s a staggering number, and a clear indication that threats against schools are only getting worse.

While risk assessments are one of the best things a K-12 school can do to understand their cybersecurity vulnerabilities in order to be strategic about how to protect against them, this critical tool is often avoided. After all, they can be absolutely awful to perform, taking up valuable time, involving confusing jargon and often not even seeming to solve any problems.

If this sounds familiar, there’s some good news. Yes, risk assessments are far from sunshine and roses. But you can get through them with less friction and pain, and ultimately improve your security posture, if you adhere to the following guidelines.

1. Get Specific About Risks & Tolerance

I’ll just come out and say it: most risk assessments are way more cumbersome and time-consuming than they should be. If you’ve tried to go through the process before only to find it’s draining you of weeks or months of your time, you’re doing the wrong assessment. It’s also entirely possible that the assessment at hand is either written as a one-size fits all sort of deal, is too narrow (and not in a way that’s suited to you and your needs), or doesn’t seem to understand the unique nuances of working in an educational environment.

Your security priorities at a K-12 school will naturally differ from the security postures of government entities or other organizations. As such, your risk assessment should be different too, tailored to your particular situations, risks, data types and even vernacular.  As you begin to work through it, identify what aspects of cybersecurity are most important to you. For schools, this will usually be protecting student data. From there, you can determine your risk tolerance which will then inform your strategy and plans.

2. Simplify the Language

Riddle me this: IT professionals conduct risk assessments, but administrators are typically the ones who read them. This sets everyone up for a disconnect in language, general frustration and subpar outcomes.

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After all, how the IT person speaks about security gaps is going to be very different than how a principal or superintendent would. If the person with the authority to approve security measures doesn’t understand them, they’re less likely to be approved. Communication matters, so make sure your risk assessment is being written by humans for humans and with language that matches a school setting – not a for-profit enterprise.

3. Loop in Others

Risk assessments must be thorough in order to be accurate, but this doesn’t mean that one person needs to shoulder the burden. In fact, the best assessments are done through teamwork. When you start an assessment, take the time to really think through who on your team is best qualified to answer a particular question or section. Delegate that part to them, along with a deadline of when you need it completed. Then, rinse and repeat for all other questions and sections. This will help expedite the completion of the assessment, and get you more comprehensive insights.

4. Understand How Compliance Fits into the Picture

As an educational institution, K-12 schools have to abide by particular rules. It’s likely that you’ve invested time and resources into becoming compliant with minimum standards related to regulations such as FERPA, but it’s important to note that this doesn’t satisfy your cybersecurity requirements. Compliance and security are not one and the same. So, make sure that you attain compliance as necessary, but then take the time to improve your security posture outside of that compliance. It’s important to cover all your bases in order to protect your most sensitive data.

5. Define What’s Next

Finally, one of the most glaring issues with many risk assessments is that they end by pointing out a lot of security holes without offering guidance on prioritization or ways to fix them. Whoever conducts your risk assessment should share their findings and also take the time to provide a path forward for your school. They should keep in mind your biggest priorities, risk tolerance and available resources when helping you create a plan that is actionable and realistic.

When it comes to schools, cybersecurity is of utmost importance. Even though risk assessments have historically been terrible, they’re a highly valuable tool when administered properly. Make your school safer by conducting a risk assessment that has been designed for schools and that follows the tips outlined here. They still won’t be anyone’s idea of a good time, but they’ll be a lot more palatable – and help you protect your school and its sensitive data the way it deserves to be protected.

Keeping K-12 schools safe from cyberattacks has become a growing concern for educational institutions, especially as these attacks increase in sophistication and frequency nationwide. This past September, a school district in Detroit was hit with a cyberattack that closed its schools for two days. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country, was also subject to an attack over Labor Day weekend, which shut off access to email and crippled the district’s website and critical systems.

These attacks have been a wake-up call to school districts about the risk of cybercrimes and the impacts they can have on operations. But why are cybercriminals drawn to them?

Why Schools Have Increasingly Become the Target for Cybercrime

From online learning portals to HR systems, much of school today takes place digitally. This makes connectivity essential to ensure technology is always working and critical operations aren’t interrupted. A modern school’s function hinges on having constant access to a network, making it a prime target for hackers to exploit any vulnerabilities within the network and issue a total system lockdown.

Another appealing trait of schools to cyber criminals is the wealth of data stored within internal databases. There, student and staff information, including their full names, birthdays, addresses and Social Security numbers, can be found and stolen for nefarious purposes, likely being sold on the dark web or encrypted for a ransom. 

While cyberattacks can put sensitive information at risk and bring school operations to a standstill, they can also be costly to remediate. According to a 2021 Comparitech study, ransomware attacks alone on U.S. schools and colleges cost $3.56 billion.

Keeping schools protected against cyber threats is essential now more than ever. Still, with only 14 percent of school districts describing themselves as “very prepared” to deal with a cyberattack, it’s clear that schools need to improve their defenses against cybersecurity issues that may arise, but how?

How to Ensure Your School is Protected

To combat the rising threat of cyberattacks on K-12 schools, districts should implement a proactive approach to cybersecurity. Waiting for an attack to happen can have devastating ramifications. Instead, schools must take action now.

Here are three strategies schools can adopt to help protect their digital learning environments:

Implement Automated DDoS Mitigation

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are the most common type of cyberattacks and the education sector continues to see more of these attacks than any other industry. DDoS attacks occur when an attacker maliciously floods a victim’s internet circuit with fake or illegitimate traffic to prevent true user traffic from passing. Maintaining both a DDoS mitigation and a scrubbing solution is critical to fighting against theseDDoS attacks. These services can proactively scan and analyze a network for threats and remove malicious traffic in real time without disrupting other operations or internet connectivity, which allows schools to embrace a “set it and forget it” mindset. When DDoS mitigation is in the background, schools can resume operations without worrying about losing internet connectivity.

Isolate Potential Threats with Network Traffic Segmentation

The proliferation of cyber threats has made data security increasingly challenging, especially with the growth of remote learning. Smart network design and tools can help isolate security concerns as they arise and improve reporting and visibility across the district’s network. Segmenting network traffic minimizes network design while reducing the attack surface, enabling faster containment options.

Leverage Unified Threat Management for Quick Access to All Security Solutions

Unified threat management is an approach that enables a single point of protection across security functions and ensures that all security solutions work together to protect against internal and external threats. With unified threat management, schools can use a co-management portal to simplify their security infrastructure, making it easier to detect threats at any touchpoint and deploy the proper solutions to combat.

The current education cybersecurity crisis is a problem plaguing K-12 school districts nationwide. It’s not a matter of if a school will be targeted, but when, meaning schools need to prepare now or face costly and irreparable impact. Employing a proactive security strategy can protect schools from cyberattacks and foster an environment where students and staff alike can thrive. 

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K-12 cybersecurity vendors: Is the threat already in your house?

K-12 cybersecurity was thrust into the spotlight when the COVID-19 pandemic forced learning online. And since then, cybersecurity has been a top concern of IT leaders and administrators.

In this eSchool News webinar, you’ll learn about real-world threats affecting the K-12 cybersecurity space and education in general, the myths behind them, and five useful tips to further protect their organizations from attacks.

Key takeaways include:

• Understanding the threats and where they’re coming from
• How to prioritize mitigation efforts
• How and where to start

In this episode of Innovations in Education, sponsored by Promethean and Merlyn Mind and hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• 4 blended learning strategies for better student engagement
• Only out-of-the-box solutions will fix the real problems in schools
• The Promising Reality of AI

Think cybersecurity won’t or can’t impact you?

Well, you would be wrong.

The number of cyberattacks only continue to grow. Virtually every business you can think of has been hit–cybercriminals have targeted the pipelines we rely on for oil and gas; the hospitals we turn to in times of need, even the social media companies where we connect.

Nowhere is this more true than in our schools.

Just this past September, the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest in the country, announced it was the victim of a ransomware attack, with cybercriminals infecting the district’s computer networks, locking up files, and stealing data. In early October, the attackers followed through on their threat to release the stolen data if a ransom was not paid.

LAUSD is far from the only district impacted. One cybersecurity firm reported that this was the 50^th attack on US schools this year. Ransomware attacks are particularly common cyberattacks in school districts because schools are chronically underfunded and understaffed to respond to cyber events.  Ransomware is designed to encrypt all systems and devices, ultimately forcing some services to shut down. The cost of paying the ransom may be cheaper than getting the system up and running again, so the payoff to criminals is almost certain, and the likelihood that attacks will continue is almost guaranteed.

This begs the question: what should school districts be doing to protect themselves?

It comes down to three steps: Protection, Detection, and Response:

Protection

The vast majority of breaches are crimes of opportunity, so closing defensive gaps and having the right solutions such as Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Email Security, and Endpoint Management solutions in place is the best first step. More importantly, keep all the technology you already use current.  Vendors will keep their solutions updated to respond as cybercriminals change their infiltration methods and become more sophisticated in their attacks. School districts should continuously invest to keep technology current. Delaying refreshes could leave them vulnerable.

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K-12 vendors are key components in all aspects of K-12 education. From operational needs such as attendance and payroll to learning applications for reading, science, and mathematics, vendors ensure school districts operate as efficiently and effectively as possible.

But K-12 vendors are also one of the greatest single sources of cybersecurity vulnerability for schools and districts. The U.S. Government Accountability Office asserted that “cyberattacks carried out directly against edtech vendors […] tend to have an especially severe impact on K-12 because they affect a large swath of students across multiple school districts at the same time.”

In fact, K12 SIX’s annual report asserted that 55 percent of reported school data breaches in 2021 were connected to incidents originating from district vendors.

How can you stay safe? Here are three ways you can better ensure your K-12 vendor selection leads to increased results rather than decreased cybersecurity.

1. Show Me Your Bona Fides

Is your vendor FERPA certified? The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education.

What about COPPA certification? The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act places requirements on operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13 years of age, as well as requirements on operators of other websites or online services that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information online from a child under 13 years of age.

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In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• Using data insight platforms to improve SEL strategies
• 5 tips to help students master foundational skills
• Teacher Shortages: Viable Solutions to Meet Immediate Needs

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In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• 4 ways to design collaborative learning spaces
• Free internet could erase the digital divide
• STEM lessons straight from the classroom

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Just when we thought the painful trend of ransomware attacks on public schools might be waning, news arrived of a massive incident. Over Labor Day weekend, the country’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, experienced a ransomware attack. The district serves 600,000 students and described “significant disruptions affecting access to email, computer systems, and applications.”

There was good news, though. The district appeared to catch the attack early, shut its systems down and avoided more serious problems. A lot of the time these attacks result in the loss of social security numbers and all kinds of other data, amounting to a serious violation of children’s privacy. For such a large district, this could have been catastrophic. LAUSD’s impressive response likely resulted from some smart preparation.

LAUSD was unfortunately not the only school to be victimized this year, and in other cases, some of the consequences appear to have been more severe. Staff at Cedar Rapids, Iowa schools saw their personal information stolen this summer, including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account numbers, and even medical history information.

The district is offering a free year’s worth of crediting monitoring services to affected employees. Another incident in Iowa involved an extortion threat from attackers calling themselves Vice Society, saying they would upload stolen files if a ransom wasn’t paid – a common tactic of cyber criminals. It remains unknown whether the two incidents might be related.

Elsewhere, a school district in Texas was forced to hold classes without access to the internet, following a ransomware attack. This included closing the campus to visitors because the screening system couldn’t be accessed.

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If you heard about the attack on the Los Angeles Unified School District in early October, you probably heard that 400,000 students’ private data was put at risk and that the hackers demanded a ransom. When speaking about the attack, the police chief made a point of saying that cyberattacks are “the number one threat to our safety” and that everyone is vulnerable. Even so, the education sector seems to have an especially large target on its back, with LAUSD being the 50th education entity to be hit with ransomware in 2022. If you want to avoid being next, there are a few key steps to take – including getting rid of flat networks. The status quo has to go.

Are You Prepared to Pay the Costs of Convenience?

All too often, schools blend their guest and student networks together. Such a move flies in the face of every single, basic security recommendation ever made, so why do they do it? Convenience. Yes, it’s more convenient but that’s because it’s insecure.

If your network is flat because of convenience, then ask yourself: Are you prepared to pay the costs of that convenience? The costs of an attack like the one at LAUSD are many, ranging from student safety to financial, operational, reputational, and more. 

A Properly Segmented Network is a Must

If someone doesn’t know much about computer networks, they won’t know that a flat network is bad. Similarly, anyone without knowledge about security won’t know the importance of network segmentation. Still, ignorance doesn’t excuse inaction. A properly segmented network reduces the speed at which a cyber criminal can move across your network, making it a key priority.

In order to segment your network, you need to develop a route, which involves creating an access control list. This is the point at which many schools and districts balk. They don’t want to have an access control list, so they end up having no idea who’s coming and going. Once again, it’s more convenient. But it’s dramatically less secure.

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In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• How edtech is embedded in Society 5.0
• How digital equity enhances cybersecurity in schools
• Blended and hybrid learning–the future of education

Local leaders must play a critical role in closing the digital divide for 18 million American households that have access to the internet but can’t afford to connect, according to a new report.

The urgent prompt comes from EducationSuperHighway, a national nonprofit with a mission to close the broadband affordability gap. The organization released its second No Home Left Offline report on the action needed to accelerate Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) adoption.

The ACP is a $14.2 billion federal broadband benefit funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that provides eligible households with a monthly discount of up to $30 per month (up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands) and a one-time $100 discount toward a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet. 51.6 million households, including 17.7 million unconnected households, are eligible for the ACP, yet only 13 million (25% of those eligible) have enrolled.

Over the past year, closing the broadband affordability gap has become a national priority. The report finds that our nation’s Internet Service Providers have stepped up, and 74% of ACP-eligible households are covered by an Internet Service Provider (ISP) offering a high-speed internet plan for $30 per month or less, making the plan free with the ACP benefit.

Despite 12.9 million ACP-eligible, unconnected households having the opportunity to take advantage of free internet, the report outlines the complex awareness, trust, and enrollment barriers that prevent households in the nation’s most under-resourced communities from enrolling. It also announces new data, tools, and best practices to help states and cities overcome them. Key report highlights include:

• 51.6 million U.S. households are eligible for the ACP, yet only 13 million households (25% of those eligible) have enrolled.
• The ACP has the potential to connect 17.7 million households that are ACP-eligible and unconnected.
• The ACP enrollment process is a significant challenge for eligible households using the National Verifier. 45% of applications are rejected, and many more fail to complete the 30-45 minute enrollment process.
• Cities in every state are proving that we can do dramatically better. The national best practice for ACP adoption is 61%, and large cities, such as Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Tulsa, have already achieved adoption rates of over 45%.
• 74% of ACP-eligible households are covered by an ISP offering a “free with ACP” plan (i.e., high-speed internet plans for no more than $30 per month). That amounts to 37.9 million eligible households, including 12.9 million that are unconnected.
• Two-thirds of eligible households are already beneficiaries of one or more government benefit programs that automatically qualify them for the ACP, giving states a targeted channel to raise ACP awareness and help participants enroll. 

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Cybersecurity is a priority concern for most people accessing the internet. Unfortunately, students aren’t thinking about cyberattacks when they access sites for curriculum, research, and entertainment from their 1:1 devices–devices that are now so prevalent since the pandemic.

Schools’ exposure to cyberattacks has also greatly increased due to expanded remote and hyperflex learning.

Join eSchool News and a panel of experts to learn the latest strategies and tools schools are using to help keep student data safe and ensure students’ digital access is secure.

Key takeaways:

• Learn the latest techniques to secure district systems
• Discover best practices for educating students and families on proper digital etiquette
• Ask cybersecurity experts about your data protection concerns

The new school year is upon us, and IT teams are ramping up strategic tech investments and systems to help ensure a smooth year ahead. For many of these IT teams, challenges around cybersecurity are top of mind, with recent research revealing over half of lower education organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year. On top of this, concerns remain around cloud costs, including new limits on free cloud storage, leaving some wondering what they’re supposed to do and having to pay up.

In light of these shifts and growing risks, K-12 IT teams need to rethink their approach to cloud storage costs and security. We recently experienced challenges at Hotchkiss School with our past cloud providers in this regard. We could not obtain the amount of secure storage we needed due to not only data consumption and performance challenges, but also because of their egress fees. In order to modernize and innovate, education decision-makers will need to embrace hybrid or multi-cloud storage options that keep their data secure by moving away from mainstream, high-cost cloud providers.

Further, to meet growing demands on schools’ IT departments, IT leaders will need to adopt a flexible cloud mindset that enables them to effectively and securely store and leverage the growing deluge of data they are inundated with – everything from student health care data to device and research data. Let’s dive into how a high performance, multi-cloud approach can help K-12 schools check the following major pain points off their list.

Data loss from ransomware attacks & other cyber risks  

Security is top of mind in every industry, especially in education where it’s important to keep our students’ and faculty information safe. In the face of growing security threats, protecting sensitive information by effectively backing up data to the cloud has never been more critical, and IT teams must operate not under the assumption of “if” an attack will occur, but rather “when.” This is especially important for schools that also rely on Microsoft Office 365 or other cloud-based SaaS applications for data storage. They must take additional backup measures as Microsoft does not guarantee that they will restore data if it is lost. In fact, Office 365 has remained the top target for SaaS attacks this past year.

While many IT teams may initially want to resort to the more traditional legacy approach of backing up their data on-premises, this strategy is less secure as it essentially acts as just one copy of data that can be easily targeted and destroyed. It also has limits as to how much information can be stored, which schools can quickly outgrow and need to pay in time and resources to maintain and scale. Cloud storage provides a more secure, easier-to-use, and cost-effective backup option.

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Digital equity in the classroom goes far beyond the need to deliver internet connectivity and devices. All students need and deserve a safe, reliable, and adaptable edtech ecosystem to support and nurture their learning experience.  

Behind the obvious laptops and countless other tech tools used by everyone in today’s schools sits what could arguably be labeled the least discussed aspect of K-12 technology: the vast software systems that nearly all schools use to store and update student data – including their identifying information. Everyone using these systems is impacted by the way in which users are required to log in, as well as interact with, cybersecurity precautions. It’s not energizing to discuss or even manage – but deploying it correctly can make all the difference for countless students. 

Just as all students aren’t the same, their needs for entering and using these systems may vary greatly. Thus, if a district uses the same access process for all, the chance that gaps in digital equity exist is nearly certain. A fifth grader with special needs may face access and access confirmation processes that take away from instruction time in each class throughout the day. Furthermore, imagine facing those same hurdles every day and every year throughout a K-12 education.  

Keeping in mind the sheer vulnerability of today’s internet connected devices and cloud-based apps, there’s a clear need for a resilient mixture of flexibility and protection that can prevent gaps in digital equity that have nothing to do with internet access, but rather, its actual use. 

A Learning Environment that Safeguards and Adapts to the Individual 

Establishing digital identities and then managing access in a secure, yet scalable and flexible way enables schools to safely and more easily cater to most unique needs. Unfortunately, many of the older legacy identity and access management systems (IAMs) were not designed to help combat the complex cyberthreats districts face today. That inevitably eats into instruction time and causes delays and inefficiencies impacting millions of students across the country.

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In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• 3 reasons instructional audio is a must-have in classrooms
• 4 tips for using data to differentiate instruction
• Modernization of K-12 Financial Operations: Increase Transparency, Improve Control and Compliance, Mitigate Fraud

When I conduct training for school employees, I like to start my presentations speaking in a “normal” voice. About halfway in, I turn on the instructional audio solution that is set up in the room.

I love the “wow factor” as teachers hear firsthand what a difference instructional audio makes. This reveal proves the technology’s effectiveness as they all understand how a similar setup could help in their classrooms.

Most teachers, principals, and paraprofessionals instinctively know that instructional audio helps amplify their voices, allowing their instruction and directions to reach every student, but instructional audio offers much more than that.

Here are three key reasons why instructional audio is crucial for today’s classroom.

1. It’s Not Just Amplification

Instructional audio provides even distribution of sound, not just amplification. This means that no matter where students are in the room, they can hear their teacher clearly. Often, teachers boast of their “teacher voice,” but speaking louder doesn’t always mean clearer. For certain words, such as ones that include an F or TH sound, speaking louder can have the opposite effect, making these words harder for students to understand.

There is a benefit for teachers, too. Teachers who speak loudly to be heard report being more tired and that can lead to more teacher absenteeism, according to one study. Teacher absences are not only costly for schools, but also disrupt students’ learning.

2. All Students Benefit

Instructional audio is proven to offer benefits not only to students who are hard of hearing. Decades of research, including the federal Mainstream Amplification Resource Room Study, known as the MARRS Project, prove that instructional audio helps those with learning differences, those in the back of the classroom and non-native English speakers.

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In this episode of Innovations in Education, hosted by Kevin Hogan:

• Teachers using technology report stronger connections, community with students
• 5 tips to build community-wide support for IT transformation
• Digital Safety for Students: Keeping Student Data Private and Access Secure

Technology’s role has been elevated to an integral strategic function in today’s school districts. But getting everyone to understand the value of digital transformation can be challenging and test the persuasion and people skills of even the most seasoned IT leaders.

Here are some strategies IT teams can use to help build a supportive culture for ongoing technology investments.

Set Up Direct Lines of Communication

Less than 30 days into my role at Judson ISD, our district was hit with a devastating ransomware attack that led to a total network takedown. While there were many lessons learned from that experience, one of the silver linings was how it brought to light across the district how critical our technology systems are.

This realization served as a catalyst for our IT team to develop direct lines of communication with every department.

Now, each department in the district has a dedicated IT staff member who manages their technology, system, and platform needs. This structure helps bridge any communication gaps between teams and creates trust that IT is there to support each department and their goals.

Develop Your Business Case

It’s not a question of “if” but “when” – cyberattacks or some other event will impact your district sooner or later. And the older your equipment, the more vulnerable it is to negative events that will impact student learning and staff productivity.

The key is to be as proactive as you can in shoring up critical infrastructure. But many IT leaders struggle when faced with pushback about the need for technology investments or requests for increased funds. In these instances, leaders need to present a solid business case factoring in the total costs and impact to the district should the system or network fail.

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Teaching methods have changed dramatically over the last few years, leading to numerous electronic resources entering the classroom. This makes school IT a formidable challenge—security experts have to juggle budget constraints with heavy traffic on the network due to a huge number of connected devices.

There is no stopping the use of technology to enhance student engagement and learning. Therefore, cybersecurity concerns are increasing along with K–12 schools’ dependence on technology.

While no network is impervious to assaults, a reliable and effective network security solution is crucial for safeguarding student data and decreasing districts’ vulnerability to data theft and sabotage.

The tools you select, and their respective performance levels, should be determined by your tech team’s budget and capabilities. Let’s outline the five tools that school tech departments need to be using.

Infrastructure and Configuration

Staying on top of network controls, flow, and operations is essential because unpatched network firmware is a common source of attacks. Network configuration helps set up and maintain networking devices, firmware, and software to block new exploits and fix bugs.

According to a recent Microsoft analysis, over the past two years, at least one attempted firmware assault has been made against 80 percent of organizations in the UK, US, Germany, Japan, and China.

Network Configuration Management (NCM) tools can help keep track of network devices by monitoring for unauthorized configuration changes and distributing firmware updates. Additionally, network administrators with better network visibility and control over the change workflow through NCM tools can both undo mistakes and prevent them.

Network Monitoring

Network monitoring tools analyze performance metrics and alert admins to anomalies. There are various brands that offer an overview of performance metrics such as latency, bandwidth usage, responsiveness, and network-based applications and devices.

You can enforce an acceptable use policy for all devices on your network and create automatic security by installing monitoring tools, such as firewalls and content filters.

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