As summer ends and the new school year begins, K-12 technology leaders face many cybersecurity and safety challenges. To help ease the transition to a safe start to the 2024-2025 school year, we recently hosted a webinar with Samuel Hoch, Technology Director for Catoosa Public Schools, and Robert Batson, Technology Director for Tahlequah Public Schools.
In this webinar, Samuel and Robert shared best practices and proactive strategies for addressing cybersecurity concerns for the upcoming school year, with a focus on protecting against phishing and malware threats. The entire webinar recording can be viewed here.
Phishing is the most common way cybercriminals break into school user accounts. These attacks often target end users during vulnerable times, such as school holidays or the start of the new semester in the fall. As threat actors become more strategic with their timing, phishing attacks are becoming increasingly difficult to detect.
With over 3.4 billion phishing emails sent worldwide every day, Robert stresses the importance of training students and staff to not click on emails from outside your domain. Adding external recipient warnings to your Google and Microsoft admin consoles is a good start. While these warnings won't stop phishing links from getting into your system, they can warn users about emails from unknown senders.
Another effective training method is to encourage students and staff to forward any emails containing suspicious links to the IT department. Sam says this trains end users to be vigilant and allows trained experts to review the emails and assess the threat.
“The biggest threat we face from students is phishing. There are so many phishing emails and almost daily staff forward us phishing emails asking us to update our bank details.”
Samuel Hoch
Director of Technology for Catoosa Public Schools
