Kuinka suojata peruskoulupiiriäsi kyberhyökkäyksiltä
Cyberattacks on K-12 schools are rising and every district, regardless of size or location, needs a plan. This guide covers the most common threats and the strategies your team can deploy today to protect your students, staff, and data.
Johdanto
For years, cyberattacks have been a source of concern for K-12 schools, and studies show, they’re rising.
Districts need to do more to protect their school networks and their data.
Cyberattacks against K-12 schools are rising for multiple reasons:
- Many district IT departments are overtaxed and underfunded
- BYOD is increasing (both on and off-campus)
- Districts have a wealth of personal data (both student and staff)
- Districts frequently use new software
Simply put, school districts are viewed as easy targets by cybercriminals.
Once cybercriminals compromise your data, not only are your students at risk but also teachers, staff, and administrators whose personal data has also been stored within district networks.
Cyberattacks can also prevent you from contacting your staff in an emergency, from paying your staff or other service providers, and from retrieving students’ coursework or your district’s data and financial records.
As such, it should not be solely up to your IT department to protect your district from cyberattacks. It is up to you and your district leaders to work closely with your colleagues in IT to ensure cybersecurity is given the time and resources required to secure your district. This guide will cover strategies all districts—regardless of size or location—can deploy to help mitigate the risk of cyberattacks.
01 | Strategies Districts Can Deploy to Protect Themselves from Common Cyberattacks
In this section, we will examine the most common ways districts are targeted by cybercriminals and what you can do to mitigate that risk.
The human factor
Breaches in cybersecurity most often occur because of human error. While this could be caused by careless behavior, it is more likely the person has a poor understanding of cybersecurity as a process.
- Lightspeed Quick Tip: "We humans remain the weak link in cybersecurity. I find people are generally worried they must be cybersecurity experts. I believe it's important we help people understand their role is to be cybersecurity aware, not cybersecurity experts. This is something anyone can do."
John Genter
Security Officer, Lightspeed Systems
What can your district do?
Regular cybersecurity training is your best defense against human error. Educate your students and staff about the dangers of security breaches, the typical threats, and the ways to protect against them.
- Implement mandatory cybersecurity training for district staff on a yearly basis—or more frequently, if your district's needs require it.
- Include cybersecurity training during in-service days.
- Send a weekly or monthly cybersecurity newsletter to your students and staff on common cyber threats and how to prevent them.
Next, make password protection part of your district's culture by:
- Ensure all personal data related to your district is locked down and password-protected.
- Reemphasize to staff how important password protection is (no sticky notes on the computer monitor).
- Let people know password length matters.
- Encourage the use of passphrases as a better alternative to passwords.
- Use multi-factor authentication for all logins.
Additionally, it is always better to restrict access to all important data and to blacklist websites that are unnecessary for education. Your district’s web filter can help with this.
You can also consider software that resets passwords and restricts access to prevent data breaches tai monitors student engagement and privacy to help mitigate student data privacy vulnerabilities.
02 | Phishing
While phishing scams used to be easy to spot, the scams continue to evolve to better target savvier internet users.
What can your district do?
One of the most effective ways to avoid phishing scams is to adequately train staff and teachers to recognize the signs of fraudulent communications.
Let them know they should look out for:
- Lightspeed Quick Tip: Send phishing tests to help people learn how to spot scams.
"It is important to see phishing tests as learning opportunities that drive improvement. Not something that is used as a shame tactic. I love it when someone sends me a phish that hooked them and explains exactly how it got them. I know they have learned and are better prepared to spot the real phish."
John Genter
Security Officer, Lightspeed Systems
- Incorrect domain name in email address
- Urgent or threatening language
- Suspicious attachments or incorrect links
- Misspelled words or grammatical errors
- Mismatched URLs
Regularly remind your district—whether through weekly cybersecurity newsletters, in-service days, or a combination—to err on the side of caution.
Let them know they should look out for:
- Not clicking links you consider suspicious.
- Hovering over links before clicking to see if the link is taking you to a trusted site.
- Never acting on "urgent" requests without going through the proper channels to authenticate the request first.
Finally, a good spam filter can help block phishing emails and is a critical backup to cybersecurity education and awareness campaigns.
03 | Spam Injections via Comments
Today, most districts have blogs, websites, and social media pages. But if anyone can comment on your post or page, they can also spam your page’s comments section or insert potentially harmful links in those comments.
What your district can do:
To prevent this vulnerability, your district needs to manage its online pages with intention, deeper understanding, and cautiousness. One way to do this is to use spam filters for comments on your blog and website. This will help block any malicious link injection in your comments section.
Your district’s web filter can play a part in keeping your students and your district safe on social media. Software like Lightspeed Filter™ gives admins control over social media access and the ability to set policies by group, age, grade, or user to ensure the right users have the right access.
Lightspeed Filter™ gives admins control over social media access and the ability to set policies.
04 | Malware
Malware is one of the most common and dangerous types of cyberattacks because it can be hard to spot quickly.
What your district can do:
Personal devices, malicious links or websites, and outdated software can all serve as entry points for malware. Ensure you have strong firewalls at the network and application levels to help stop malware from infiltrating your district’s network. Additionally, your web filter can be an effective tool. For instance, Lightspeed Filter™ offers security features that help categorize and block malware.
Next, create a malware playbook with the steps you will take if a malware attack occurs. Be sure to include a contact list with your insurance carrier and even the local FBI contact. Your malware playbook should also address your communication plan. For instance, who will need to be notified and what information should you share? It is important to test your playbook, so run a gameday around it.
In the case of a successful malware attack, seek immediate professional help. Malware can be very serious and fighting it requires a strong understanding of cybersecurity and security systems. The solution here is not to deal with it individually unless you are a professional.
Lightspeed Filter™ tarjoaa suojausominaisuuksia, jotka auttavat luokittelemaan ja estämään haittaohjelmia.
05 | Formjacking
Usually used to siphon credit card information and other financial data, formjacking may be a particular threat to private and parochial schools that require parents to make payments online.
What your district can do:
Most formjacking attacks occur via third-party software and the code is put in long before that software is installed on the user’s network. Districts can combat this by consistently testing new updates and running vulnerability tests.
Using a masked credit card or paying via Apple Pay®, Google Pay™, or another online payment system that employs tokenization can also offer parents and staff extra protection when they enter financial data into a school’s website.
06 | Data Breaches
Schools are responsible for vast amounts of data about their students and employees. This wealth of information makes them a prime target for data breaches.
What your district can do:
According to a report by Kindergarten Through Twelfth Grade Security Information Exchange (K12 SIX), the most common access point for data breaches at schools is through third-party vendors and administrative services. Lax agreements with third-party vendors can leave confidential information exposed to unauthorized users or lead to physical data misappropriation. To mitigate risk, school districts need to ensure the partners and vendors they work with use up-to-date, comprehensive security features.
07 | Denial of Service Attacks
A Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack overwhelms a target like a website with a flood of malicious internet traffic from multiple sources. This “denies” service to real users, making the system unusable. While DDoS attacks can increase at the start of the school year, they are not the primary threat to K-12 districts, accounting for only 1% of attacks.
What your district can do:
Robust firewalls can help identify incoming attacks, notify administrators, and block the damage. To mitigate the fallout if a DDoS attack does get through, create backup sites and systems that can handle redirected web traffic. Known as network redundancy, this tactic can ensure that districts keep running if their primary systems go down.
Cloudflare is a possible solution as well, depending on your district’s website. If your district’s website is hosted in a cloud provider, the provider likely already offers some protection.
DDoS attacks on K-12 Districts in the 2024–2025 school year.
(Source: Based on Comparitech and CIS data)
08 | Additional Cyberattack Prevention Steps
To help your district mitigate the risks of cyberattacks, go through this list, and ask yourself how many of the following strategies your district has effectively implemented.
- Lightspeed Quick Tip: When conducting a cybersecurity audit, ask yourself:
- What does our system look like?
- What is our infrastructure?
- What companies are we working with from an edtech perspective?
- How well are they operating with each other?
- Keep all your systems updated. That's the number one thing you can do to prevent cyberattacks. Patching is critical.
- Ask your cybersecurity insurance carrier what resources they offer to help. Your insurance advisor is a resource your district can leverage to not only purchase the right levels of cyber-liability insurance, but also advise on the risk management practices needed to satisfy underwriters.
- Conduct an annual audit of your district's network and security features. Including any patches or updates that need to be made and any gaps in the security performance of third-party applications and vendors. To help you run a successful audit, consider getting analytics software like Lightspeed Insight™ to help you easily aggregate the data you need for your audit.
- Make regular cybersecurity training a priority for your district to help reduce the chances of human error. This includes requiring cybersecurity training for your district, adding cybersecurity training to in-service days, and sending a cybersecurity newsletter.
- Have a secure cloud for your district. Public cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) can help you easily store and access your data while ensuring its confidentiality and integrity.
- Ensure all accounts on your school's network have multi-factor authentication enabled. Users who enable MFA are 99% less likely to get hacked, according to Microsoft.
- Seek support from your local authorities before there's an attack. Your district does not need to tackle this problem alone; your local authorities may be able to advise you on the services and next steps your district should take, and it may be able to assist in those next steps. Knowing the resources you can draw upon from your city or county can help your district quickly escalate to the right parties in the event of a cyberattack.
- Make digital citizenship a part of the curriculum for all staff and students. Practicing digital citizenship not only helps prevent online bullying and harassment, but also helps people understand their digital footprint, intellectual property, safe online communication, and online privacy.
- Create a plan for what to do if a cyberattack or suspected cyberattack occurs. Know the precautions you have in place. That includes having a plan for how to communicate to staff and families about any compromised data and what steps you're taking to recover the data.
With third party reviews, Lightspeed Insight™ monitors policy compliance to help prevent privacy vulnerabilities
09 | Government & Agency Recommendations
Funds and government agencies recommend similar tactics. For instance, the U.S. Department of Education’s Privacy Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) advises districts to take the following steps to establish cybersecurity:
- Conduct security audits to identify weaknesses and update/patch vulnerable systems.
- Create and routinely review audit logs for suspicious activity.
- Train staff and students on data security best practices and recognizing social engineering tactics of scammers.
- Limit access to sensitive data.
Meanwhile, the FBI recommends focusing on two main areas to reduce the risk of cyberattacks:
- Prevention efforts (such as awareness training and robust technical prevention controls).
- Creating a solid operations continuity plan in case of an attack.
TASB Risk Management Fund, which provides risk management solutions to Texas school districts and other educational entities, recommends designating an information security officer (ISO) who, when possible, has information security duties as their primary role. This person would have the explicit authority to administer data privacy and cybersecurity requirements on behalf of your district’s board, superintendent, or other relevant executive-level management. The ISO would be tasked with developing and maintaining a cybersecurity plan that includes appropriate information security policies, procedures, and technical controls. Additionally, the officer should provide guidance and assistance to board members, information owners, information custodians, and end-users concerning their independent responsibilities in combating cyber risk.
These are some of the ways to protect your district from cyberattacks. In the next section, we provide a list of other resources your district can leverage to help protect itself.
10 | Cyberattack Online Resources
There are many online resources available that provide additional guidance to school districts looking to develop cybersecurity plans.
11 | How Lightspeed Can Help with K-12 Cybersecurity
Lightspeed’s security solutions empower districts to strengthen their risk posture, protecting students, staff, devices, and data from the inside out. By combining decades of expertise in content filtering with advanced AI and comprehensive edtech management, Lightspeed delivers robust protection through a single, unified platform. Serving as a critical foundation for schools’ information security and data privacy strategies, Lightspeed enables IT leaders to proactively safeguard their digital environments and ensure compliance with evolving regulations.
Lightspeed Insight™
Lightspeed Insight™ empowers IT and instructional technology leaders with a single view of district edtech usage to quickly understand and act on approvals, cost management, and impact. Save time and improve compliance with app approval workflows, real-time privacy policy scanning, and integration with 1EdTech and Student Data Privacy Consortium certified apps directories.
Kanssa Lightspeed Insight™, schools can:
- Improve decision making with actionable, real-time, standardized metrics on app usage and engagement.
- Simplify your edtech review and approval process.
- Streamline manual edtech data privacy management.
- Ensure equitable connectivity for all students.
Lightspeed Filter™
Lightspeed Filter™ gives your school flexibility and control to promote learning and exploration without hindering productivity or compromising end-user privacy with the most comprehensive content filtering solution across all OSes and learning environments. Prevent access to millions of inappropriate sites, images, and videos faster and more accurately with the most extensive database, built through 20 years of web indexing and machine learning.
Kanssa Lightspeed Filter™, teachers can:
- Scale with our cloud-hosted, device-level patented technology without increasing costs or compromising on performance.
- Get consistent coverage and reporting for all OSes without the need to configure proxies, PACs, or trust certificates for popular devices and browsers.
- Manage customizable policies, on and off campus, that go beyond CIPA compliance, including BYOD and IoT.
