|
The Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), in partnership with Mass Networks Education Partnership, created the Cyber Security for the Digital District leadership initiative to provide information and tools for K-12 technology leaders and policy makers to help them protect network and information security in ways that help technology contribute to their school’s primary goal of teaching and learning.
The Cyber Security project has two major audiences:
- the CIO, CTO, Technology Director, or other person who runs the district technology systems.
- the Superintendent, School Board or other people who set overall education policy for the district.
We started this project because of the growing number and increasing sophistication of the security threats facing schools coming from both within and outside the education system. It was clear that education technology leaders and policy makers needed information and a framework that will help them better understand the issues and the stakes. They need tools to help them analyze their current status, both in comparison to other districts and as an independent system, validating what they are doing well and giving them insight into how risk can be further reduced. They need guidance about how to develop and implement a cost-effective action plan to strength security and be able to handle the problems that will inevitably slip through even the most thorough preparations.
As education becomes increasingly enmeshed in digital networks, with students doing Internet research for multimedia projects and educators embracing more data-driven decision-making, school systems have evolved from stand-alone islands to sophisticated networks tightly intertwined both with its users and the rest of the world. With this higher level of empowerment and engagement comes a higher level of risk. A virus hits over two thirds of all networked computers each year. Over half of reported system damage comes from within an organization.
This situation has created the need for new understandings and actions on the part of school leaders. However, few of these leaders are ready to deal with the responsibilities that have been, or will be, thrust on them, often in the worst of circumstances when there is little time to think or prepare. Unless we start raising awareness and disseminating best practices now and in the absence of an immediate crisis, we will be faced with disastrous problems in the future.
CoSN already has a leadership initiative dealing with protecting the safety of individual users, called Safeguarding the Wired Schoolhouse. But the incoming waves of viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and other attacks made it clear that a separate program was needed to help school leaders deal with the security of their overall system as well.
In response to the growing concern about K-12 network security, CoSN designed a multi-year leadership initiative. To ensure that it accurately promotes best practice in a rapidly evolving field, the project draws upon the experience and resources of leading school technology vendors, government agencies, non-profit organizations, and school technology leaders. Staying deeply embedded in the K-12 world ensures that the project appropriately incorporates the needs of many different kinds of districts – big and small, wealthy and struggling, well staffed and thinly staff, high and low IT usage, urban, suburban, and rural. As with all CoSN projects, it is scrupulously vendor-neutral and non-commercial – although other groups are always encouraged to help disseminate our materials to their own clients and constituencies.
We are creating materials to the Superintendent and Chief Technology Officer of local school districts help raise their own awareness and the awareness of their community. The materials will help them assess the current status of their security preparations and to know how to make step-by-step improvements. The project also seeks to help education leaders learn from "best practice" leaders in other sectors – including private industry, higher education, and government – and to share their experiences and insights with each other.
CoSN’s Cyber Security for the Digital District project is one of a series of CoSN leadership initiatives that include:
|
|
