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According to the K-12 Cybersecurity Attacks Resource Center , hundreds of K–12 schools in the United States alone face cyberattacks each year, with 408 schools disclosing them publicly in 2020, an increase of 18% from the year before.
The fourth-largest school district in Georgia, Fulton County Schools, has discovered the value of installing a top-notch security system. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) of Fulton County Schools, Dr. Emily Bell, developed thorough planning that included teaching and informing school administrators and personnel about cybersecurity to fight against threats. Microsoft has resources as part of its comprehensive cybersecurity plan.
“As a Chief Information Officer, it is incumbent upon me to make sure that my leadership is aware of our cybersecurity incident response process,” said Dr. Bell. “I also want to educate district leaders on our cyber insurance coverage and what that means.”
Microsoft Defender for Office 365 was used by Fulton County Schools to keep all of its technology safe and secure and to help in preventing disruptions to student learning.
Insecure users are continuously searching for holes in educational IT networks. Leaders in Fulton County Schools were aware of the importance of selecting a security system capable of protecting the district’s extensive network of 107 schools and 95,000 pupils. Other tools and techniques had been attempted, but they soon recognized they needed more. They choose to use Microsoft 365 A5 educational license security features to monitor, identify, and mitigate any risks after examining its capabilities.
All Office 365 applications are safeguarded against cutting-edge attacks by Microsoft Defender, which is included in the A5 license. Additionally, it has the skills needed to deal with malware, phishing, ransomware, and compromised credentials as well as other cybersecurity issues. Internet security experts are particularly concerned about distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults because they aim to obstruct a server, service, or network’s regular traffic by saturating it with Internet traffic or its supporting infrastructure. Dr. Bell was confident that Microsoft security would offer a comprehensive solution given these high-level advantages, therefore the district implemented it.
A recent incident demonstrated how important and practical Microsoft security technologies were to Fulton and the necessity of constant contact with leadership in the event that a threat is reported.
At Fulton, exactly that took place. A threat was reported to Dr. Bell and the district superintendent at the same time.
Dr. Bell and her team illustrated how incidents are handled behind the scenes at the proper level of urgency based on assessed risk to reassure district leadership, including the superintendent. This increased trust in Fulton’s ability to deal with the risks that schools throughout the nation eventually face in the Internet age.
A single 30-day period alone saw 39 ransomware attempts, all of which were contained and eliminated; 712 malware attempts, all of which were blocked; 983 compromised credentials, which were mitigated by automatically disabling accounts; and 254,255 phishing attempts, of which nearly 89% were not successful, according to Dr. Bell. The ability to successfully foil all of these attempts was important to ensure that classes could continue uninterrupted for the students.
“What was reported to the superintendent never even rose to the level of ‘incident.’ We had a report, then we found, contained, and eradicated the threat, and nothing came of it,” said Dr. Bell. “It turned out to be a fire drill for us.”
Dr. Bell has also assembled a task force of leaders from other departments to help manage risk around-the-clock because support from many departments is important for keeping things moving smoothly.
Additionally, Fulton and Forsyte I.T. Solutions have an ongoing connection that enables Fulton to install Microsoft’s cutting-edge security capabilities in the district’s Microsoft 365 A5 subscription.
Teams, including the task force and security partners, follow customized checklists created to eliminate each particular type of danger. Triage, containment, eradication, recovery, post-incident activities, and closure are the steps to take once a threat has been identified.
As a result, when a department is affected, everyone who needs to know is kept in the loop about the threat, how it may affect them, and what is expected of them—avoiding needless fear. Fulton’s task force and partnerships now work to develop communication and understanding. In the end, all of these measures contribute to preventing danger from developing to the point where it affects with students’ ability to study.
Districts of all sizes are experiencing security problems, despite the fact that not every district is as big as Fulton and might not face as many cybersecurity attacks risks. In order to keep students moving forward with their education, it is important to have the infrastructure and bandwidth to avoid outages and slowdowns.
“It’s important for districts to have a cyber response plan and to educate their leadership on that plan, and perhaps create a cyber task force, because attacks happen every day,” said Dr. Bell. “Every district needs to evaluate their own risk and develop plans that are specific to their most likely cyberattacks.”
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