CISA and Cyber Resources in Your State
August 09, 2023
As the White House and federal government increase its outreach and support for K12 schools as they navigate cyber security and cyber attacks, we wanted to share recent resources that were shared with your state education agency.
CISA is the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and last month they sent an email to each state’s educational agency. Their goal was to get their newest resources to every state, in tandem with this week’s cyber summit (more on the blog here). Here is the information that was relayed to your state agency:
As the National Coordinator, CISA’s top priority is to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure from both physical and cyber threats. The risks we face are too severe, too complex for any organization to manage alone. CISA is specifically concerned about the risk of a cyber intrusion causing disruptions to the services that Americans depend on every day, specifically the kindergarten through 12th grade community and education facilities. Cybersecurity is a growing concern for education and technology leaders in K-12 communities. Schools and school districts are an especially lucrative and vulnerable target for malicious cyber actors given the presence of sensitive student and staff data and personal information. As states prepare for the upcoming school year, CISA wants to ensure you have as many resources necessary to protect your school districts from any type of cyber activity.
Through the K12 Cybersecurity Act, CISA was directed to develop a report focused on the K-12 cybersecurity issues. In early February, CISA released “Partnership to Safeguard K-12 Organizations from Cybersecurity Threats”, or what we like to call the “K-12 Cybersecurity Report” with an accompanying toolkit to provide schools targeted resources to improve their cybersecurity. These resources call out very specific actions that schools can take to drastically reduce their cybersecurity risk, we strongly encourage you take these actions ahead of the start of the school year. If you have any questions on how to implement, or actions to take first please do not hesitate to reach out. Please find below links to not only our K-12 Cybersecurity Report, but also additional resources CISA has to offer below:
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