While technology has created boundless new opportunities for learning, it has also produced ever-growing data security challenges. In years past, cyber defensive strategies were confined to internal environments.

As the fifth-largest public school district in Texas, Austin Independent School District (ISD) is guided by the motto “AISD Anywhere” to provide 100,000 students, teachers, and parents greater access to their EdTech tools.

As the fifth-largest school system in Georgia, Clayton County Public Schools (CCPS) has a history of delivering quality education to a diversity of students.

When Chief Technology Officer Rod Smith stepped into his role nine years ago, there were no online systems for students to log in and access resources.

“It’s like we put up a brick wall.”

When Millis Public Schools in Massachusetts set out on a multi-year search to find a single sign-on (SSO) solution to help streamline the login process for their teachers and students, what they ended up finding was a solution to another problem. 

On Monday (3/21/22), the White House released a statement by President Biden on our Nation’s Cybersecurity warning that “based on evolving intelligence” U.S. companies and organizations need to urgently harden their cybersecurity defenses against potentially imminent cyberattacks.

Educational institutions are frequent targets of ransomware attacks, with account takeovers being one of the largest causes. These attacks can cost institutions millions of dollars in downtime, people time, device cost, network cost, lost opportunity, and ransom paid. Plus, ransomware attacks put institutional data at risk and can cause the school to temporarily close.

Has your district evaluated or implemented single sign-on (SSO) services to simplify your students and educators’ login experience to their online learning tools? While this is an important step forward, it’s likely not the full solution your district needs.

As K-12 accelerates their collective journey down the path of digital transformation, one key undertaking of midsize-to-large school districts is the improvement in the learning experience, at scale, while improving cybersecurity.

The Educause Annual Conference 2021, held in Philadelphia, PA from October 26-29, connected higher education institutes from around the country. Following nearly two years of event cancellations, this was one of the first educational conferences to bring back the in-person experience while also offering the flexibility of a virtual option.

College and university systems comprised of multiple institutions face many IT challenges due to their complex organizational structures and breadth of users. Often, sharing systemwide services to reduce costs and minimize complexity is at odds with the need to maintain control and prohibit visibility of individual institutional resources.