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Whether they take the form of a targeted attack or an accidental leak, cyber incidents are a major threat to the U.S. school system.

From public school districts to higher education and everywhere in between, malicious actors are chomping at the bit to get ahold of student data. Of course, hackers are just one part of the problem.

Education institutions are also struggling to keep personal information safe from internal cyber risk. Worse yet, transformative classroom technologies are making it harder than ever to uncover student safety signals and mitigate preventable incidents.

Luckily, its not hard to pinpoint the solution: Schools need insight into whats lurking behind the scenes, no matter whether thats a potential cyber attack or inappropriate content. The only problem? As it turns out, visibility isnt so easy to obtain.

Lets explore everything you need to know about K-12 cybersecurity and safety, including what your school district can do to better protect students from cyber risk.

At first glance, you might assume K-12 cybersecurity and cyber safety are one and the same. Indeed, both are concerned with student well-being, but theres a notable difference.

Specifically, cybersecurity involves proactively safeguarding sensitive information from a potential threat. This can include both internal and external cyber risk factors such as a student inappropriately accessing data on a school-provided device or a threat actor attempting a data breach.

On the other hand, cyber safety is more associated with ensuring students and staff members are safe from physical or emotional harm stemming from cyber incidents; the goal being to prevent such incidents in the first place. (Looking for an example? More on this later.)

The common denominator is that both are crucial in todays increasingly digital school district.

According to a recent report, the K-12 school system experienced a 275% increase in ransomware, 157% rise in malware, and 146% leap in IoT attacks all in 2022 alone.

In essence, that means malicious actors are targeting K12 schools at an accelerated rate. Why? Because theyre a goldmine of sensitive data. Whether youre a private or public school, chances are youre processing the following:

And, because your district has this information, its safe to say your edtech vendors do, too. When you allow vendors to access your data, youre entrusting them to mitigate cybersecurity risk. But, if their abilities are lacking, a third-party data breach could expose your student data at which point, anything could happen. Theres no telling how a threat actor might exploit your personal information.

Where safety is concerned, your school district must also be wary of how students and staff are using technology.

Despite their benefits, edtech tools and cloud applications especially arent always operated with the best intentions. For instance, a student may use a school-provided cloud resource (such as a Google Doc) to cyberbully a classmate. Another cyber risk to consider is that users could be using apps to share inappropriate content, such as pornography or depictions of graphic violence.

Not only are these incidents harmful to youths, but they also violate the Childrens Internet Protection Act (CIPA). CIPA requires you to implement internet security and safety policies for monitoring activity and blocking access to content deemed obscene, inappropriate, illegal, or harmful to minors.

Per the Federal Communications Commission, violating CIPA can result in your school district losing its E-Rate eligibility.

More than just school network or endpoint protection, education institutions are in dire need of cloud security.

Many districts rapidly adopted cloud services during the pandemic. According to CoSNs EdTech Leadership Survey, 97% are using some type of cloud-hosted learning management system. This corroborates our own research in collaboration with EdWeek, which found that over 90% of schools are using cloud domains like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.

Unfortunately, as cloud technologies rose to the forefront of the school system, so did cybersecurity threat vectors of all shapes and sizes.

With the available data we saw a three-fold increase in cyber incidents affecting the K-12 education sector last year, said Doug Levin, co-founder and director of the K12 Security Information Exchange. That increase was due to the greater [uptick] of technology by schools and the exploitation of IT systems of third-party educational technology vendors that schools rely upon.

Whats important to remember is that remote learning isnt going anywhere. In fact, CoSNs 2022 report indicates that about quarter of schools offer hybrid learning options in the 2022-23 academic year.

Sadly, education institutions arent putting much of their budget into securing student data. When they do, most of their resources are put toward school network security not the cloud.

Consequently, theyre vulnerable to countless cloud-based attack strategies and risks. Lets unpack some of the most common ones:

Inappropriate and harmful behavior among students has long been a lingering problem in the U.S. school system. Although strides have been made over the years, recent tech developments are further stoking the flames of toxicity.

Of course, schools were struggling with cyberbullying well before they ever adopted cloud technology. But, with more digital channels in students hands than ever before, its becoming increasingly difficult to monitor, investigate, and prevent.

Its no surprise that toxicity comes in many forms. Whats more shocking is that there might be traces of them floating around your cloud domain.

K-12 cybersecurity isnt a walk in the park, but were here to help. Here are a few of our cybersecurity recommendations plus a few quick tips to help you shield your school district.

Its important for all users to understand their role and responsibility in keeping the district safe from cyber risk. Both students and staff should be trained on best practices. That way, everyone can do their part.

Here are a few tips you can use when safeguarding your district:

The biggest pain point IT administrators have is that they cant see the full scope of their cloud domain. A cloud monitoring tool can take you behind the scenes of whats really happening, unearthing previously hidden risks and enabling you to intervene.

DLP software is a cybersecurity tool that focuses on preventing critical information from being exposed. With DLP, you can implement custom policies or rules that users must follow when it comes to the cloud. If a student downloads an unsanctioned app, youll be notified right away of exactly whos involved and what actions they took. If someone is discussing suicide or self-harm, youll be similarly alerted and can implement the appropriate response protocol.

Sometimes, all you need is a buffer between your district and the cloud. Thats what CASB has to offer.

When you have a solution with CASB capabilities, you can insert an additional security layer that users must bypass before accessing cloud services. Cloud access security brokers are designed to give you more visibility into who has access to data and how they use it. That way, they can identify suspicious user activity and stop malicious actors in their tracks.

All things considered, K-12 cybersecurity isnt simple. A lot of factors are at play, and you need every advantage you can get to protect your students.

Luckily, thats what ManagedMethods is for. With our automated cloud security platform, you get all these capabilities rolled into one easy-to-use dashboard.

The post A Comprehensive Guide to K-12 Cybersecurity and Safety appeared first on ManagedMethods.

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from ManagedMethods authored by Alexa Sander. Read the original post at: https://managedmethods.com/blog/a-comprehensive-guide-to-k-12-cybersecurity-and-safety/

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A Comprehensive Guide to K-12 Cybersecurity and Safety - Security Boulevard