"Schools Already Struggled with Cybersecurity. Then Came COVID-19"

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified the cybersecurity challenges faced by school districts across the United States. Before the coronavirus crisis, school districts had already been experiencing cybersecurity shortcomings because of the lack of dedicated funding and the shortage of skilled security professionals to assess and enhance cybersecurity defenses. These insufficiencies have resulted in system setup errors and poor patch management that leave schools and their students vulnerable to hackers and scams. The shift to online learning has intensified these risks. Millions of teachers and students must now use chat software, lesson portals, digital message boards, and other online tools, which could be used as attack vectors if they are not set up with proper authentication and controls. Attackers can also abuse the tools used for accessing school networks remotely, including virtual private networks (VPNs) and the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), to infiltrate systems. This article continues to discuss the cybersecurity challenges facing school districts, the amplification of these challenges by the pandemic, vulnerabilities discovered in different school systems, and current K-12 digital security incident-reporting.

Wired reports "Schools Already Struggled with Cybersecurity. Then Came COVID-19"