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Cybersecurity

How to Become a Certified Cybersecurity Professional

by ClassLink
written by ClassLink

Whether technology teams and administrators are ready or not, cyberattacks on schools are on the rise at an alarming rate. These attacks not only compromise the integrity of sensitive student data but can also disrupt learning, taking crucial instructional time away from educators, and putting pressure on school leaders to better protect their students. What can we do to boost cybersecurity in our schools?

Cybersecurity Solutions in Education

Unfortunately, existing cybersecurity standards and supports are complex, costly, and not designed for education. But what if there was an easier way education leaders could evaluate their current cybersecurity practices?  Luckily, there is cybersecurity support designed for education!

To help schools become more cyber-secure, the Cybersecurity Coalition for Education—a coalition of trusted education associations and organizations ClassLink, ENA by Zayo, and Security Studio—has developed a new three-tiered approach to cybersecurity.

Pioneering a groundbreaking education-focused approach to measuring and improving cybersecurity readiness, the coalition has created the Cybersecurity Rubric (CR) for Education, as well as free training and a professional certification to guide schools to improved cybersecurity.

What is the Cybersecurity Rubric (CR) for Education?

Cybersecurity Rubric (CR) for Education home page

The Cybersecurity Rubric (CR) for Education is a free, powerful self-assessment tool that helps education leaders evaluate their current cybersecurity practices. Based on the Cybersecurity Framework for Education—a unique framework informed by NIST and other relevant cybersecurity and privacy standards—the CR helps schools gain a clear understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to improve their defenses and safeguard against threats.

Cybersecurity Rubric Video

What does the Cybersecurity Rubric for Education offer?

The CR takes the guesswork out of cybersecurity, helping schools self-assess, identify gaps, and, most importantly, protect valuable data. With the CR you’ll . . . 

1. Know Where You Stand with Cybersecurity

The CR is based on a Maturity Model—a roadmap for organizations to assess and continuously improve their level of proficiency in a particular area. You evaluate your school’s cybersecurity practices and determine where they fall on a scale of 1 to 5, ranging from reactive to proactive.

2. Use a Tool Built for Education

Written in easy-to-understand language, the CR is based on education interpretations of cybersecurity standards. The rubric provides key guidance on what to look for when evaluating how well your school meets the standards.

3. Create a Plan for Continuous Improvement

When you finish your assessment, you gain a complete picture of where your school stands with cybersecurity preparedness. Strengths and weaknesses are clear, and you know where you need to invest to improve.

Become a Certified Cybersecurity Rubric Evaluator (CCRE)

Improving cybersecurity in schools is a big challenge, and one of the biggest obstacles is the cost of hiring cybersecurity experts. That’s why the Cybersecurity Coalition for Education created another solution besides the CR: an online training program designed to help schools cultivate their own cybersecurity professionals.

CCRE Video

Take your Cybersecurity Rubric training further! After learning how to self-assess your school’s cybersecurity practices, take our certification exam to become a Certified Cybersecurity Rubric Evaluator (CCRE) and provide third-party evaluations to school systems. As a CCRE you’ll gain a valuable professional designation, elevate your personal brand, and be able to charge a fee to evaluate the cybersecurity practices of other schools.

Together with the Cybersecurity Rubric for Education, education leaders certified as CCREs are leading the charge in protecting schools and creating a future where all schools are cyber-ready.

Click Here to Get Started!
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CybersecurityDigital Literacy

Three Easy Strategies for Computer Security

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

November is a big month for computer security. The 30th happens to be National Computer Security Day, a nice reminder for students to reflect on their “digital hygiene” and assess what might be going well and where improvements could be made. If not reminded, students may forget that they should back up their electronic devices, run antivirus programs, and watch out for any suspicious websites they may come across regularly. This is especially important if they are using loaned or borrowed equipment for extended periods of time from their schools.

Some students may feel confused when it comes to protecting their laptops and devices, but there are some easy strategies educators can implement, whether teaching in person or virtually, to help their learners feel empowered and safe online. There are plenty of computer security tools available that offer a variety of benefits and fit most budgets, so it is important to assess what exactly your students’ needs are within the classroom environment to make the best decision for you.

Download a Password Manager

Generally speaking, the more services that are offered online means the more online accounts one has to make in order to use those services. More online accounts means there are more passwords to remember, and most people default to using different variations of the same password because it is easier to remember. Although convenient, this poses a security risk. If there was ever a data breach, your password could be used by a hacker to log into your other accounts and steal sensitive information.

On the other hand, some people are good at creating unique passwords, but are bad at remembering them. A common way this is dealt with is either by writing each unique account down on paper or on a note-taking app on a frequently-used device. Paper is the preferred method here, as an electronic copy of all your private information could easily be deleted or corrupted, but paper can just as easily be thrown out or discarded by accident as well.

To prevent either scenario from happening, there are programs called password managers that you can download which store your information in one easy place on your laptop or computer. This is a great tool for students because they may forget what they set their passwords to, and a password manager can easily find and populate your account information into login screens.  

Install a Firewall

Securing your digital accounts is a great step in the right direction for digital hygiene. Next, you might want to take a look at your computer’s network security. Most computers offer some type of malware protection as an add-on when it is first purchased, but it is a good idea to check your computer to see if you have protection or if it may be expired.

If you discover that most of the classroom computers don’t have adequate protection, consider investing in a next-gen firewall program. Firewall technology can detect potential threats in web traffic before they reach your system, which is definitely an advantage if you’re teaching full classes, virtually or in person. The added security of advanced systems may not be the first thing administrators would want to consider spending their budgets on, but it will surely be worth the money saved on potential cyberattacks as schools continue to navigate learning from home. Alternatively, there are a few cheap or free options for securing data.

Purchase a Webcam Covering

One of the easiest ways to make an immediate impact to your personal security on your device is to buy a cover for your webcam. In the current Zoom Era, video conference meetings are the so-called new normal, and it might be worth having manual control over who can and cannot see you. 

Although you can turn your front-facing camera off in your settings, it might be worth it to place a physical covering over the camera when you are done with meetings for the day. It can give parents peace of mind knowing that their families aren’t being watched if they are at risk of a cyberthreat, and it also adds another layer of protection against potentially awkward Zoom mishaps.

The end of November marks the beginning of the festive holiday season which is going to be celebrated very differently this year than years before. Families will be relying on their tech devices working properly now more than ever to help spread the merry spirit, and viruses are going to be the last thing on everyone’s minds. To help the holidays run a bit more smoothly this year, consider using one or two of these strategies and tools to help keep everyone’s spirits bright.

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

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digital citizenship
Digital Literacy

Celebrating Digital Citizenship Week with Powerful Resources

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Digital citizens are critical thinkers. They carefully weigh evidence and sources and come to informed conclusions about what they encounter online. They are digitally literate, that is, they use information technology effectively and in ways that empower them to be lifelong learners. Creating an informed citizenry, one that can skillfully use ubiquitous and evolving tech tools, is a central goal of education, and the primary goal of digital citizenship.

What’s more, a good digital citizen is safe online. As we increasingly live our lives through connected devices, understanding the smartest and safest ways to use them, and the networks they run on, is vital to ensuring that students are well-prepared for life outside of school.

A Week of Celebration

Spreading awareness of these benefits is the purpose of Digital Citizenship Week, October 14–18, 2019.

Education nonprofit Common Sense describes the week as an opportunity to “amplify your students’ voices and give them ownership of their digital lives.” It’s a skill that today’s students will need not just in the future, but today. Want to bring digital citizenship into your classroom? Below are some resources that might help.

Digital Resources for a Digital World

  • Common Sense, mentioned above, offers a number of videos paired with lesson plans for elementary, middle, and secondary grades on a variety of digital citizenship and literacy topics. Best of all? You have access once you create a free account. Need resources in Spanish? They’ve got you covered.
  • Nearpod offers starter-pack lesson plans for K-12. Once you teach them, you can receive a limited edition Nearpod badge to use in your classroom or email signature. And they have day-by-day activities recommended, too.
  • For a day-by-day outline of digital citizenship, check out this post from curriculum developer AES Education. Written for last year’s commemoration, this piece lays out a progressive understanding of the topic, one day at a time.
  • If you’re willing to go the route of resources available for purchase, ISTE’s Digital Citizenship in Action, Empowering Students to Engage in Online Communities, written by high school librarian Kristen Mattson, is all about flipping old practices on their head. Instead of teaching what not to do, she explores what action students can take to be good digital citizens.
  • Those looking to dig into more detailed topics might want to explore the educator tools at DigitalLiteracy.gov, a joint project of ten federal agencies. Notably, the site’s powerful search and filtering function lets you find the right tool based on your interest.
  • Digizen, as the name implies, is a website all about digital citizenship, with pages specifically designed for teachers, parents, and students.
  • Be sure to scroll through Cyberwise’s massive trove of digital resources on the subject.
  • Find out what the fandom around the incredibly popular Korean pop band BTS can tell us about digital citizenship.

Photo: Tim Gouw

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ed tech news
Educational Trends

Ed Tech News Roundup: Esports, Newfangled Libraries, and More

by Andrew Roush
written by Andrew Roush

Howdy, folks! Welcome to another in a series of biweekly ed tech news roundups. We hope you enjoy — and if you have a story you’d like to see included, let us know.

Staying Safe Online and IRL

Digital citizenship and personal safety online are a vital part of everyone’s life, and a topic of growing concern in education. As the focus grows, schools and districts are working to imbed good digital practices into their curricula.

  • Schools have begun monitoring student behavior online in an effort to prevent bullying and violence, both physical and digital. But questions of safety vs. privacy, especially for students, are being raised. [NPR]
  • The U.S. Department of Education announced this month that, beginning in 2020, they will grant two Presidential Cybersecurity Education Awards, one to an elementary teacher and one to a secondary teacher, for educators who “best instill skills, knowledge, and passion with respect to cybersecurity and cybersecurity-related subjects.” [ExecutiveGov]

Game On

Esports is another growing trend, and even as educators begin to consider the effects and educational potential of competitive video gaming, new resources are being rolled out.

  • The High School Esports League (HSEL) has released a free, “turnkey” esports curriculum, with the support of Microsoft, called “Gaming Concepts.” [THE Journal]
  • Nintendo’s Super Smash Brothers titles are esports mainstays. Now, the Japanese gaming giant has partnered with Digital Schoolhouse to provide UK students with Nintendo’s Switch devices for gaming and devise-based learning. [Pocket-lint]

Not-So-Quiet in the Library

The role of school libraries has changed drastically in previous decades, and as technology continues to adapt, adjust, and innovate, librarians are doing the same.

  • In Oregon, the number of licensed librarians in schools has dropped nearly 80% while the number of students per librarian has jumped more than 500%. Schools and districts are hurrying to catch up, even as the role of teacher-librarians expands. [The Register-Guard]
  • In a wide-ranging Q & A, a library department supervisor and president of the Pennsylvania School Librarians Association weighs in on the role of the modern school librarian. [Lancaster Online]

…And Finally

The students at North Farmington High School in Michigan didn’t grumble when they had to take their student ID pictures this year; instead, they got creative. Check out how these high schoolers recreated their favorite pop culture characters. [Newsweek]

Photo: fran hogan

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cyber secure
CybersecurityDigital Literacy

Four Steps to Creating Cyber Secure Students

by Guest Blogger
written by Guest Blogger

It’s almost impossible to overstate the impact of technology on the lives of students today. With the ever-increasing popularity of social media platforms and online games like Fortnite, children are spending longer than ever before online.

Despite this, children and teenagers are often left with little-to-no understanding of basic internet safety and cybersecurity practices. Rarely covered in school, students at risk from a range of threats. From cyberbullying and screen addiction to inappropriate content and stolen personal information, it’s vital that educators help students become more cyber aware. This article will provide four steps to help create more cyber secure students.

1. Introduce the Issue Early

As many as 43 percent of children between the ages of two to four in the US now have access to a tablet. This makes teaching students about technology and cybersecurity from the start of their education essential. To explain the issues to young children in a way that they’ll understand, stay clear of complicated jargon and use real-life scenarios to explain how the internet works and the risks associated with it.

Advise your students against doing anything online that they wouldn’t do in real life. This could include a comparison between accepting a friend request from a stranger and talking to them online to talking to a stranger on the street. By using familiar concepts, your students will be able to grasp the fact that the internet, like real life, poses certain dangers that shouldn’t be ignored.

2. Teach Best Practices at School

While using technology in school, ensure that students carry out basic cybersecurity best practices. This way, it’s more likely to become a habit that’s maintained when outside of the classroom.

Creating strong passwords is a vital step to securing your information online. To help educate students, make sure that any accounts accessed on school devices require a strong password which contains symbols, uppercase and lowercase letters, and numbers.

Another essential piece of knowledge that students need to be armed with is that their activity online does not simply disappear. Posts on social media accounts and other digital activity will quickly build up. Though many students will not be concerned by this prospect, it’s imperative to educate students about how their digital footprints can lead to damaging repercussions relating to job prospects and college applications.

Finally, a lesser-known risk comes from the use of public WiFi networks. These can be found everywhere from libraries to cafes and pose a number of significant risks, including lost personal and financial information. To mitigate these risks, ensure that your older students understand what makes a trustworthy VPN and how basic internet encryption works.

3. Talk About Sensitive Issues

An incredible 95 percent of teenagers in the US now have access to a smartphone. This has resulted in the rise of a number of new issues that need to be addressed in school. From cyberbullying to sexting, it’s important to explain the dangers and repercussions of such activities to students.

Ignoring these sometimes uncomfortable issues does not solve them. Further, issues such as screen addiction can have a dramatic impact on a student’s academic potential, so it’s important to create an environment in which students feel comfortable and supported by their teachers.

4. Educate Parents

Educating children about how to stay safe online is not just something that has to happen at school. To create a truly holistic internet safety program, parents may also need to be educated. Holding online safety workshops at school to help educate parents about internet safety best practices is a good way of ensuring that when the student’s leave school, they remain safe online.

Advise parents on how best to restrict age-inappropriate content at home, such as installing a child-friendly browser or enabling Google safe search. Without educating parents, it’s unlikely that your strategy will be fully implemented or successful.

Conclusion

Ultimately, keeping students safe online requires ongoing attention and effort from educators. Throughout their education, they will be introduced to several different types of technology and the threats will change over time. However, with the proactive involvement of educators and parents throughout the process who understand basic internet safety and cybersecurity practices, there is a greater chance that students will remain cyber secure.

This is a guest blog by Sam Woodhams. Sam is a researcher at Top10VPN, an independent cybersecurity research group and VPN comparison website. He writes about issues of digital privacy and cybersecurity to help protect vulnerable communities from digital threats.

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internet cafe
CTO/CIOCybersecurityDigital LiteracyTechnical Support

Phishing Attack: Evil Google Email

by Miguel Guhlin
written by Miguel Guhlin

Have you received a strange email sent to someone with numerous letter h’s in their name? If so, even though you may know the person who has invited you to view the document (and their photo may be displayed), you are seeing a phishing attack. Stop and take a moment before you proceed.

What’s a Phishing Attack?

Phishing is “…the attempt to obtain sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication” (Wikipedia). That means, even though you see the face of someone you know in the email sharing a Google Doc with you, two things are still possible: 1) Their email has been compromised and 2) They didn’t send you that phishing attack. You can find more information and some helpful infographics about phishing attacks in this blog post by Pixel Privacy. In an earlier blog entry, It’s Not the Phishing, It’s Your Lack of Influence, I pointed out that education is all important when dealing with clever attacks like this. Let’s break down what’s happening.

Scott Laleman (Director of Technology, South San ISD) shares the following:

We’ve blocked mailinator.com in our firewall, filter, and management console, but the messages look like they’re coming from in-house and are “to” an address at mailinator.com (the address with the hhhhhhh in it) with bcc to each person or group, but blocking any messages to or from that domain seems to have stopped them from coming in at this point.

How Do I Avoid the Trap?

But before we do that, let’s ensure you know what your options are in this type of situation:

  • When you see a suspicious email asking you to enter your login credentials, you have several options. With Google Docs, simply go to http://drive.google.com and check the Shared With Me section. This will let you know if a document was actually shared with you.
  • Open a fresh Compose message and send it to the person who allegedly sent you the message, or call them, tweet them, or Slack them. Ask the question, “Did you share a Google Doc with me?” If the answer is “No,” then delete the document.
  • Scrutinize the From: and To: to verify they are authentic.
  • If you must click, copy the link to OPEN DOC and create an incognito or private browser window. That way, your login credentials stored in cookies in your browser will not auto-populate or show up in the username/login box. I keep a Firefox browser around for exactly this purpose.

As you will see, each of these steps would have foiled the phishing attack many fell prey to earlier today.

What’s Happening?

At approximately 1:57 pm Central time, users (Update 5/5/17: Google reported, as cited by Threatpost, 1 million user accounts affected) began receiving emails purporting to share a Google document:

Phish Attack

If they clicked on the button shown above, the user was taken to a site that looks like this:

phish attack

 

If they entered their email, they would see a screen that pulls in their name and email, then asks for their permission. This is unnecessary for Google Docs, and would normally be a red flag (but most users are unaware that it is).

phish attack

Image Credit: Robert Stubbs, Lockhart ISD

If you were one of the many users snared by this phishing scheme, make sure you follow the steps below to remedy it.

How to Mitigate the Phishing Attack?

If you have fallen for this particular attack, you will need to take the following action:

Go to Apps Connected To Your Account and REMOVE access, as shown in the image below:

Image Credit: Bryce Anderson

Unfortunately, two-factor verification would not have prevented nefarious hackers from accessing your account if you had granted permission. This particular attack has little to do with how you login, and more with how third party apps connect to your Google account.

For a more detailed step by step, check the Reddit Google Forum.

Update 05/05/2017: For school technology administrators, Amplified IT has offered a solution that takes advantage of GAM. “GAM is a command line tool that allows administrators to manage many aspects of their Google Apps Account,” states the GAM Wiki. You can access Amplified IT’s solution online. This solution can only be implemented by your technology administrator and is not intended to be an individual user solution.

What’s Next?

If you haven’t enabled two-factor authentication for your Google Suites for Education domain or begun to educate your staff on how to avoid phishing attacks, then those are your next steps as school district leaders. If you need professional learning on how to accomplish this, don’t hesitate to contact TCEA for assistance.

 

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