elementary school student’s data are compromised, it may be a decade before parents look at their child’s credit report and realize there’s a problem.
Key Components
Now that we know why cybercriminals want data from educational entities and the potential cost of a cyber incident, let’s examine key components we can imple- ment to help protect our students and staff.
Data governance plan. First, districts should have a data governance plan. Data governance plans formulate policies and procedures for an organization to handle any data issues. The data governance plan, at a mini- mum, should address • Data life cycles • Management and storage • Security and protection • Usage and dissemination • Archive and destruction • Critical incident response
These individual policies and procedures help ensure that student and staff data are secure and detail how to handle certain situations if an incident arises.
Security awareness training. Security awareness training is a strategy that IT and security professionals use to prevent and mitigate user risk. These programs are designed to help users and employees understand the role they play in helping combat information security breaches. Security awareness training is critical for all staff members.
A recent IBM Cyber Security Intelligence Index report found that 95% of all successful cyberattacks are caused by human error. Misconfigured networking equipment, lack of firewalls, or one click on a malicious phishing email may be all that stands between a hacker and access to your network.
In relation to staff awareness, all district email accounts are property of the district, not the individual. Individuals should not use their district-provided email account when signing up for personal accounts on non- district websites.
If an individual signs up for an account on another company’s website using his or her district email address and the same password used to access that person’s email, and said company has a data breach, the individ- ual has potentially caused a data breach for the district because a cybercriminal now has the email username and password for the district.
Administrative privileges. One easy way to prevent malicious email links from being executed and run in the background is to ensure that no staff members, includ- ing IT staff, have admin rights to the machines they use
26 MAY 2022 | SCHOOL BUSINESS AFFAIRS
A password reset policy should require users to change their passwords every specified number of days.
daily. Admin rights on a machine increases the likelihood of someone clicking on a link they shouldn’t. IT staff members should have separate login accounts with admin rights they use only when they need elevated privileges to complete their work.
Password policies. A strict, enforced password policy can protect your district. A strong password should • Be at least 12 characters long • Be unique from previously used passwords • Contain no words that are spelled completely • Include a variety of characters, including uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols
Consider passphrases instead of passwords. A pass- phrase is a password composed of a sentence or combi- nation of words, including numbers, symbols, and upper and lowercase letters. A passphrase is typically longer than a password and includes spaces. An example of a passphrase is “New York w1nters R c0ld!” A password reset policy should require users to change their passwords every specified number of days.
Bottom Line
All educational organizations should have a data gov- ernance plan that lays out security policies and poli- cies and procedures for handling data. Districts should have cyber insurance to cover district liability for a data breach involving sensitive data and strong local and off- site or cloud backups to protect against ransomware. Security awareness training is crucial to protect the district’s network and help staff protect them- selves at home.
Kevin Richmiller is director of technology for the City of St. Charles School District in St. Charles, Missouri. Email:
krichmiller@stcharlessd.org
asbointl.org
TATIANA/
STOCK.ADOBE.COM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48
