Cybersecurity

K-12 School Districts Face Unique Cybersecurity Challenges

Cybersecurity Threats impact all school districts’ human, physical, and virtual elements. Preparing for each of these types of threats may be a different person’s responsibility depending on many factors, including district size, work responsibilities, experience, and more. There’s plenty of guidance from government and private sources. Still, much of it isn’t realistic about resources nor considerate of the unique considerations of serving large numbers of minor children.

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threats

The top 5 threats to your district are:

Phishing- the practice of sending a legitimate- seeming email to get a User to reveal personal information or install malicious software

DDOS- Distributed Denial of Service attacks try to flood the system with requests to overwhelm it and cause a shutdown

Data Breaches- release of secure, confidential information like that contained in a student’s permanent record

Ransomware- A malicious type of software that encrypts your data and requires a password- paid for with a ransom- to unlock

Internet of Things Vulnerabilities- Many districts use equipment like security cameras, watches, and cloud-based voice services that have poor inherent security and are not updated regularly

Don’t wait any longer- start securing your school or district today.

Save Time
Our risk assessment will point out areas of highest risk where results are most easily attainable. Focus your energy on steps you can immediately take through internal changes.

Save Money
A cybersecurity audit can easily cost more than $20,000. Leverage our low-cost assessment first to identify what you can do yourself and to inform future purchases.

Lower Risk
Our assessment identifies strategies based on ease of implementation and risk mitigation impact. Learn the steps your school or district can take to achieve the most significant impact quickly.

The Challenge

Cyberattacks are a growing risk that can kill your productivity, hurt your reputation, and cost you money. But, for many schools and districts, getting a handle on this ever-changing landscape is difficult and often very expensive.

STS EDUCATION understands the complexities of managing risk in a school or district environment. Accordingly, we utilize a risk assessment framework based on ATLIS cybersecurity recommendations when working with our school and district partners to assess, prevent, or mitigate their risks.

Our assessment was created by school technologists and experts from security, law, and insurance. It helps cybersecurity teams identify the areas of highest risk and the actions they can take to get the best risk mitigation.

Our Approach

STS EDUCATION works with your internal team to complete our online assessment. First, STS helps your cybersecurity team better understand the assessment steps and the purpose of the information being gathered. Together, we’ll examine your personnel, policy, and technology systems to help decrease the time needed to complete the assessment and increase the fidelity of the information submitted for analysis.

Once the assessment is complete, our experts review and score your responses against our rubric in terms of both risk mitigation impact and relative ease of remediation. Then, we create a security risk dashboard for your school or district and build your custom cybersecurity action plan. Finally, we meet with your team to share key findings and begin implementing your school or district plan.

K-12 Cybersecurity Risk Management Solutions

Are you interested in learning more about cybersecurity risk management solutions for K-12 schools and districts? Give us a call today!

what we do

STS Evaluates More Than Just Hardware

It’s essential to approach your plan from both the technology angle and the human and processes angles. STS works with your team to complete our online assessment, where we review personnel, policy, and technical systems. Then, we score your responses against our rubric for risk and ease of remediation. Our experts examine your answers, create a performance dashboard, and build your cybersecurity action plan. Then, we meet with you to begin the process of putting that plan into action.

Key Risk Assessment Outcomes
Our quick, low-cost risk assessment process offers cybersecurity teams accessible, jargon-free conversation regarding K-12 cybersecurity risk, as well as:

A shared understanding and more substantial buy-in among district and school leadership regarding cybersecurity risk management
Documentation of school or district personnel, policy, and technology practices relative to cybersecurity best practices
Summary of the most significant areas of cybersecurity risk
Personalized recommended strategies for cybersecurity risk mitigation
Dashboard for informing, reviewing, and documenting progress