Explosive Report Highlights Cybersecurity Risks Impacting K-12 Schools

BOULDER, Colo., March 4, 2019 (Newswire.com) - ​In a first-of-its-kind report, The State of Cybersecurity: 2018 Year In Review found that K-12 schools suffered at least 122 cybersecurity incidents in 2018, nearly 60 percent of which resulted in personal data being compromised.

The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center has been tracking K-12 cybersecurity incidents since 2016 using its interactive K-12 Cyber Incident Map. The deep analysis of 2018 cyber incident data found that:

• Publicly reported K-12 cyber incidents resulted in the theft of millions of taxpayer dollars, stolen identities, tax fraud and disruption of education due to loss of access to school technology.
• Cyber incidents do not discriminate by school location, community type or size. If school technology is accessible over the internet, mistakes can occur and malicious actors are taking note.
• There is a considerable gap between when school districts experience an incident and when (or if) they become aware of it.

“The goal of policymakers, technologists and school leaders must be to reduce and better manage the cybersecurity risks facing increasingly technologically dependent schools. Make no mistake: keeping K-12 schools ‘cyber secure’ is a wicked problem — one that is sure to get worse until we take meaningful steps to address it,” says Douglas Levin, president of EdTech Strategies and founder of The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center.

ManagedMethods, the leading cloud application security provider for K-12 school districts in the United States, co-sponsored this important report to help educate the public about the risks of using education technology.

“As parents of school-aged children, we have a personal interest and a moral obligation to help protect schools from cybersecurity incidents,” explains David Waugh, VP of sales and marketing at ManagedMethods. “That is why ManagedMethods is on a mission to make cloud security easy and affordable for this vulnerable and underserved market segment.”

ManagedMethods helps hundreds of K-12 schools secure cloud applications, such as Google for Education and Microsoft Office 365. Information technology staff gain critical visibility and control over malicious and accidental data breach activity.

About The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center

The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center is the home of the K-12 Cyber Incident Map. It has been instrumental in drawing attention to the emerging cybersecurity threats facing U.S. K-12 public schools and districts.

The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center is devoted solely to issues of school cybersecurity and privacy issues. It is maintained as a free, independent resource for the K-12 community by EdTech Strategies LLC.

About ManagedMethods

ManagedMethods makes cloud security easy for IT managers of K12 school districts, local governments and mid-market companies. The platform provides visibility and control over activity in an organization’s cloud applications, such as Google G Suite and Microsoft Office 365.

With ManagedMethods, organizations gain data security from internal and external breaches, threat protection from malware and phishing schemes, and full control over account behavior. ManagedMethods is easy to use, affordable and requires no special training for administrators. Best of all, it has no impact on network performance or end users.

Source: ManagedMethods