Schools keeping cybersecurity in mind as new year begins
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Students will be back inside a classroom in just a few days with the start of the school year right around the corner. Every year, technology plays a larger role in the learning process and according to one I.T expert, that has caught the eye of hackers.
David Wolf the Vice President of I.T company Just Solutions, near Rochester, said that cyber security remains the biggest concern among district ED-tech leaders.
“A lot of that information that is provided on the kids and their families can be easily accessed from these districts,” he said.
Wolf said schools have a lot of information on kids which is gold for hackers, who he said steal information for identity theft, textbook scams, even contacting families of high school age students about fake scholarship applications or college housing opportunities.
“Schools need to make sure that the school computers and teachers’ computers are all secured and monitored daily continuously,” Wolf said.
A spokesperson from the Buffalo schools said that they take cybersecurity very seriously after dealing with a costly ransomware attack in 2021. While they never paid a ransom to the attackers, the district did spend millions of dollars to bolster their computer network security.
The school says the district has multiple layers of security for its systems, including mandated use of multi-factor authentication for all employees. Adding there have been no reported cyber-attacks on the district in the last two years.
“It’s hard when you’re dealing with older kids and you’re teaching them how to do online research and that type of thing,” Wolf said.
An annual survey from the Consortium for School Networking, a collection of ED-tech leaders in K-12 across the country report, that to stop this, 53% of districts now have incident response plans versus 34% two years ago.
Along with showing 72% of schools now compared to 40% in 2022 are using two-factor authentication, which wolf says is the best way to stop hackers in education
“Teachers need to have their complex password and use multifactor authentication to get into their accounts. If the student accounts are going to be less secure, that’s fine. But then they need to have filtering on them, and they really need to have all the parental controls,” said Wolf.
Schools aren’t alone in this fight. In April, the U.S. department of education alongside the cyber and infrastructure security agency launched a government coordinating council to help mitigate risks and improve tech security at our schools.
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Dillon Morello is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has been part of the News 4 team since September of 2023. See more of his work here and follow him on Twitter.
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