Recently a school district reportedly was “hacked” sometime around April 14th by a source that all feel was at the international level with the need by the district to attempt a recovery of the information via “ransomware” to the tune of somewhere around $10,000.
From my perspective we perhaps do not think enough or ask the right question as we use our computers on how safe our school district technology files are. In days long past, a superintendent would mention to your secretary the name of a person and within minutes you had a multi-page print document on your desk but not today, as calling up a staff name on your computer can bring into your view all you need to know. Print files are less and less available. While this is so great, there is a real need to check to see just how safe your system really is relative to protection and backup, as we see printed by the Boston Globe “the threat of ransomware is growing and evolving.” I do not know about you but this brings up a great amount of insecurity in my mind.
Knowing we have backup both in our M.A.S.S. office as well as off-site, my feelings are that protection for most school districts is there but then you ask yourself if this is a sense of false assumptions as our school budgets keep heading up keeping technology budgets down.
My suggestion to avoid “The Jetty” is to do some checking on your school district backups on and off site. I am certain that if hacking is “evolving” so also should be our protection of district websites and servers.
Just my thoughts,
Paul J. Andrews, M.A.S.S.
JETTY defined as a pier or structure of stones, piles or the like, projecting into the sea or other body of water to protect a harbor and deflect the current