Cyber Security

Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (PBIS)

Learn how educators can create affirming, culturally-supportive, and productive learning environments.

Colorado Association of Leaders in Educational Technology (CALET)

One of the most helpful resources identified at the K-12 Cybersecurity Focus Group meeting was CALET - the Colorado Association of Leaders in Educational Technology. This working group is sponsored by CASE and any school IT professionals are welcome and encouraged to join. The purpose of the Colorado Association of Leaders in Educational Technology (CALET) is:
- To provide professional development opportunities that enhance the growth of educational technologists as educational leaders.
- To influence decision-making concerning educational technology, including policy and funding, at local, state and national levels.
- To share knowledge of technology and its application in education to other educational leaders.
Cybersecurity and Cyber Safety Considerations for K-12 Schools and School Districts
- Cyber threats can impact either the human (students, teachers, and staff) or the physical or virtual (e.g., information technology [IT] networks and systems) elements of schools and school districts. While there may be some overlap in addressing human versus physical/virtual threats, preparing for each type can require input from different individuals with experience or expertise on that topic and unique actions before, during, and after an incident. Schools may therefore choose to plan for these threats separately, but still under a broader umbrella of cyber threats.
- To support education agencies with the development of a cybersecurity annex, the REMS TA Center has created resources on this topic. They have researched how cyber incidents affect education agencies and steps they can take to result, resulting in fact sheet sheets. These fact sheets (below) focuses on addressing threats to a school's or school district's network and systems also called cybersecurity considerations and people in the school community - also called cyber safety considerations.
Cybersecurity Considerations for K-12 Schools and School Districts
- Cybersecurity Fact Sheet (PDF 221 KB)
- Schools (public and nonpublic) and school districts face a myriad of challenging hazards and threats.1 In addition to natural hazards, technological hazards, and biological hazards, they now have to prepare for human-caused cyber threats. These incidents can be accidental or deliberate and disrupt education and critical operations, expose sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) of students, teachers, and staff, and lead to high recovery costs.

Culturally Responsive Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (CRPBIS)

Culturally Responsive Positive Behavior Interventions and Supports (CRPBIS) is an educational initiative grounded in local to global justice theory with the ultimate goal of educational systems change. Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and various types of data collection, local schools work with members of their communities to identify tensions within schools, pose new solutions, and test their effectiveness. Dr. Aydin Bal developed an inclusive problem-solving activity called Learning Lab that brings together diverse voices of educational professionals, families, students, and community members at the same table.

Cyber Safety Quick Links for Protecting Youth: Empowering Students to Become Responsible Digital Citizens and Engage Online Safely

This Technical Assistance (TA) Snapshot provides key preparedness and response considerations for COVID-19 and gives school safety teams, families, and students key practical steps and quick links to Websites offering cyber safety resources, tools, and training. Together, communities, led by school safety teams, can enhance their cyber safety knowledge and capabilities of the whole school community by using this New TA Snapshot.

Cybersecurity Action Steps

This infographic outlines four simple steps all members of the K-12 school community can take to stay safe online.

Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)

Report, “Protecting Our Future: Partnering to Safeguard K-12 Organizations from Cybersecurity Threats”Malicious cyber actors are targeting K–12 education organizations across the country, with potentially catastrophic impacts on students, their families, teachers, and administrators. A new report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) helps schools reduce the risks of a cyber catastrophe.
K-12 Bystander Reporting Toolkit: School safety reporting programs are designed to provide students and other community members with a trusted avenue for seeking help and reporting concerns when issues arise involving student wellness or safety. These systems facilitate early intervention when concerns are reported, thereby helping to prevent targeted violence and other negative outcomes in K-12 schools. In a combined effort to improve and encourage reporting, CISA’s School Safety Task Force and the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center have partnered to develop the K-12 Bystander Reporting Toolkit.
Visit the Power of Hello Campaign where you can find information to assist in identifying and effectively responding to suspicious behaviors.
Assess risks and their potential impacts. CISA created the K-12 School Security Guide Product Suite to provide K-12 districts and campuses with resources, tools, and strategies to evaluate vulnerabilities, strengthen security, and better protect school communities.
Examine and test safety processes and plans through exercises. CISA Tabletop Exercise Packages are a comprehensive set of resources designed to assist schools and districts in conducting their own exercises and initiating discussions within their organizations about their ability to address a variety of threat scenarios.
Learn more about Protective Security Advisors (PSAs) and Cybersecurity Advisors (CSAs)
Access the online toolkit companion
Social Media Threat Guidance for School Staff and Authorities Infographic. CISA created this infographic to highlight social media threats affecting school districts in the United States, provide mitigation and response measures for social media threats directed at school districts, and connect school safety stakeholders to the suite of tools and resources provided by CISA and its partners to promote a culture of readiness and preparedness.

Cybersecurity Recommendations for K-12 Schools Using Video Conferencing Tools and Online Platforms (CISA)

K-12 school districts are increasingly incorporating distance-learning tools as a means of delivering curricula. Advances in information technology as the increased availability of video conferencing software and video conferencing capabilities incorporated into other products have rapidly made distance learning more feasible. However, schools and school districts must balance the convenience, usability, speed, and stability of these platforms with increasing risks to both school IT networks and individual users.
This videoconferencing product is for school district and campus IT administrators and staff charged with securing their IT networks, as well as end users such as teachers to help them think through cybersecurity issues.

Cyber Safety Video Tip Card

Video calls are abundant with opportunities to compromise your private information. Follow these tips to help form safe video call practices to protect yourself from slip-ups or malicious acts from others.

Cyber Safety Video

The team at CYBER.ORG and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) partnered to produce this Cyber Safety Series. In this new world of video calls, it’s more important than ever that we use good cyber safety practices during every meeting we attend. Here are a few simple rules to follow when participating in a video call to ensure you stay safe and keep all your private information…well private.

Dear School Safety Partner: Cybersecurity and Cyber Safety

In this TA Snapshot, the REMS TA Center describes cybersecurity for schools and steps education agencies can take, with the collaboration of parents, to protect student privacy while increasing the use of digital learning and video-sharing platforms in response to COVID-19. School safety teams can learn about threats facing school and school district networks and systems, as well as REMS TA Center resources in the context of cyber threats in the school setting, in this New TA Snapshot.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS)

To access DHS behavioral threat assessment programs visit

FBI

Indicators Associated With WannaCry Ransomware (May 2017)
Ransomware on the Rise FBI Protect Yourself and Your Organization
- Ransomware is a type of malware that infects computers, networks, and servers using encryption to make files unreadable.
- Ransomware doesn't just impact home computers. Businesses, financial institutions, government agencies, academic institutions, and other organizations can and have become infected with it as well, resulting in the loss of sensitive or proprietary information, a disruption to regular operations, financial losses incurred to restore systems and files, and/or potential harm to an organization's reputation. Source FBI ransomware on the rise.
  Ransomware has been around for several years, but there's been a definite uptick lately in its use by cyber criminals. And the FBI, along with public and private sector partners, is targeting these offenders and their scams.

FortifyFL

To access the FortifyFL suspicious activity reporting app

Guiding principles for creating safe, inclusive, supportive, and fair school climates

All students deserve learning environments that are safe, inclusive, supportive, and fair. Schools can both keep their school community—including students and school staff—safe while ensuring every student is included, supported, and treated fairly. Consistently applied, evidence-based approaches to discipline are important tools for creating learning environments that are foundational to the success of all students.

K-12 Digital Infrastructure Brief: Defensible and Resilient

This brief highlights cybersecurity recommendations and promising practices from states and districts across the country. It is designed to help schools build solutions for their own contexts and offers examples from the field of those who faced pernicious challenges to connectivity, accessibility, cybersecurity, data privacy, and other infrastructure issues and designed solutions for their challenges.

Partnering to Safeguard K-12 Organizations from Cybersecurity Threats

This report provides recommendations and resources to help K-12 schools and school districts address systemic cybersecurity risk. It also provides insight into the current threat landscape specific to the K-12 community and offers simple steps school leaders can take to strengthen their cybersecurity efforts.

Protecting Sensitive and Personal Information from Ransomware-Caused Data Breaches

This fact sheet provides information for organizations to use in preventing and responding to ransomware-caused data breaches.

Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools (REMS)

Family Reunification Annex
Emergency management planning is very important because many incidents, whether caused by hazards or threats, are unpredictable. When unpredictable incidents occur, they may prevent a normal school dismissal, thereby making it difficult for families to reunite with students. A Family Reunification Annex can be created as a part of a school emergency operations plan (EOP) in order to detail actions to take before, during, and after an emergency to ensure students are reunited with their families.
There are many aspects to consider when creating a Family Reunification Annex, including communications; logistics; student security and release; and children who are missing, injured, or worse. Once completed, the annex should provide details on how to inform families about the reunification process in advance; clearly describe roles and responsibilities in reunification; verify that an adult is authorized to take custody of a student; and facilitate communication between the family check-in gate, student assembly area, and reunification area.
Maximizing the strength of an education agency’s plans for family reunification is an important part of the work that emergency management teams do at the K-12 level.

Suicideispreventable.org

Learn more about Know The Signs suicide prevention guidance and resources

The Parent's Guide to Smartphone Security

Keeping your child safe online is a modern problem that many parents face today. After all, technology is moving faster than many people can keep up with. If you have a child, then you are well aware of the new devices that are becoming integrated in a child's life. So, how do you, as a parent, ensure that your child is safe and secure when using a smartphone? Other than banning your children from using mobile devices, there is no way to completely remove this risk. Read more...(PDF 221 KB)

Ransomware Resources by Topic

U.S. Department of Education’s approach to integrating a Multi-tiered system of supports with comprehensive school counseling programs

A multi-tiered system of supports, including Response to Intervention and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, is a widely utilized framework implemented in K–12 schools to address the academic and behavioral needs of all students. School counselors are leaders who facilitate comprehensive school counseling programs and demonstrate their relevance to school initiatives and centrality to the school’s mission. The purpose of this article is to discuss both a multi-tiered system of supports and comprehensive school counseling programs, demonstrating the overlap between the two frameworks.
Specific similarities include: leadership team and collaboration, coordinated services, school counselor roles, data collection, evidence-based practices, equity, cultural responsiveness, advocacy, prevention, positive school climate, and systemic change. A case study is included to illustrate a school counseling department integrating a multi-tiered system of supports with their comprehensive school counseling program. In the case study, school counselors are described as interveners, facilitators and supporters regarding the implementation of a multi-tiered system of supports.

US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation

Children's Connected Toys: Data Security and Privacy Concerns

Stand with Parkland’s 5 Questions Every Family Should Ask as the School Year Begins

Stand with Parkland – The National Association of Families for Safe Schools has released a series of five questions that families need to ask to ensure their children’s safety as the school year begins.
These questions are a starting point for an extended conversation that families should have with their children’s school officials, teachers, and administrators to understand how prepared a school is to address safety issues and how transparent a school is when they occur.

Stop Ransomware

Ransomware is an ever-evolving form of malware designed to encrypt files on a device, rendering any files and the systems that rely on them unusable. Malicious actors then demand ransom in exchange for decryption. These resources are designed to help individuals and organizations prevent attacks that can severely impact business processes and leave organizations without the data they need to operate and deliver mission-critical services.
#StopRansomware Guide: This guide serves as a one-stop resource to help organizations, including schools, reduce the risk of ransomware incidents through best practices to detect, prevent, respond, and recover, including step-by-step approaches to address potential attacks. School personnel, parents, educators, administrators, and students can also find a range of ransomware-related resources on StopRansomware.gov.

Supporting Students’ Social, Emotional, Behavioral, and Academic Well-Being and Success

This fact sheet is one of four developed by a collaboration of U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, Office of Safe and Supportive Schools technical assistance centers to enhance state and district implementation of the Guiding Principles for Creating Safe, Inclusive, Supportive, and Fair School Climates to ensure that all students have the opportunity to learn in environments that are safe, inclusive, supportive, and fair.

SchoolSatefy.Gov

Cybersecurity Resources
- SchoolSafety.gov offers resources, programs, and tools school communities can use to prevent, respond to, and if needed, recover from cybersecurity threats and cyberattacks.
Online Safety Resources
- Tips and resources to help parents and guardians, school communities, and students prevent and protect against online threats and dangers.

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Web Link Disclaimer: The Colorado School Safety Resource Center (CSSRC) provides links from this site to external websites because of their potential interest or usefulness to the safe and positive school environment, an education community or the general public. It attempts to monitor such sites on a regular basis. However, the CSSRC cannot be responsible for the content of any site external to its own. Further, by linking to other sites, the CSSRC is not endorsing any particular product, practice, service, provider or institution, nor does it necessarily endorse views expressed or facts presented on these sites. In addition, neither the CSSRC nor any of its employees, makes any warranty, expressed or implied, or assumes any legal liability for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information linked to from this site.