Frontline Blog

As funds provided to school districts for the use of technology continue to grow, it will become even more important that the business office and technology departments work together.

With COVID-19 sweeping the globe, many school districts around the country find themselves in the midst of an unprecedented shift from the routine of a normal spring on campus to a largely remote work and distance learning experience.

In the shadowy corners of the internet, medical records are readily available for purchase. On the dark web and black market, patient records can sell for $1,000 apiece. These records are sold to buyers in many industries: data brokers like IQVIA (formerly known as IMS Health), pharmaceutical firms and even tech companies. Children’s health data is just as valuable, and no one can doubt that medical records, especially those for our children, should be rigorously protected.

Do you know what would happen to your school district’s data in the event of a cyber-attack? How much data, exactly, would be at-risk if your school district were suddenly exposed? Who would be affected and what information could become available?

Unless you’ve been offline since the days of dial-up and connecting to the internet courtesy of a CD from America Online, you know what it’s like to turn on the news and wonder if your passwords are now in some hacker’s grubby fingers.

Making sure that your people are being paid the right amount, consistently and on time is among the most critical responsibilities of a school business office. An unintended consequence in many districts, however, is that Finance and Payroll tend to be an island instead of working alongside Human Resources.

Just this month, over 143 million American discovered their sensitive information was compromised by a massive security breach at Equifax. Once again Americans find themselves scrambling to update passwords and wondering when the scammer emails and phone calls will start rolling in.  

Over the last three years, there has been a definite increase in the number of K-12 security incidents. School districts are often “easy targets” due to a lack of cyber security resources, and because student information is an unfortunately hot commodity on the dark web markets.