Cross-posted at the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center: https://k12cybersecure.com.
According to a report released today by the K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center, The State of K-12 Cybersecurity: 2019 Year in Review, public K-12 education agencies across the country experienced a total of 348 cybersecurity incidents during calendar year 2019. This is nearly 3 times as many incidents as were publicly-disclosed during 2018. Many of these incidents were significant, resulting in the theft of millions of taxpayer dollars, stolen identities, and the denial of access to school technology and IT systems for weeks or longer.
Student and educator data breaches were the most commonly experienced type of incident in 2019. Over half of these were due to the actions of insiders to the school community, including edtech vendors and other third-party partners. The next most frequent type of cyber incident experienced by schools during 2019 was ransomware, mirroring the experiences of other local government agencies.
Tags: Blog • data breach • K-12 Cyber Incident Map • K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center • malware • Phishing • Privacy • ransomware • Research Insights • Security