The education sector is facing an alarming rise in cybersecurity risks as it enters 2025, according to a recent analysis by Moody’s, a leading credit rating agency. Over the past two years, the cyber risk rating for education and nonprofit organizations has surged from “moderate” to “high.” This indicates a troubling trend that demands urgent attention from schools, universities, and nonprofits.
The three fundamental contributors to the steep increase in cybersecurity attacks across the U.S. public education sector are increased digitization; as schools and nonprofits adopt more digital tools and online platforms, they expand their digital footprint, weaker cyber defenses as compared to other sectors, education and nonprofit organizations often have limited resources for cybersecurity, and the third is very high Ransomware rates. The education sector has experienced some of the highest rates of ransomware attacks in the past year, with associated costs more than tripling. These attacks often cripple school systems, disrupt learning, and impose significant financial strain.
The challenges for education institutions are compounded by limited resources to combat these threats. While federal initiatives like the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) $200 million cybersecurity pilot program offer some hope, the demand far exceeds the available funding. The pilot program, which was approved by the FCC in June, provides a total of $200 million to eligible schools and libraries to help them purchase advanced firewalls, antivirus protection technology, and other cybersecurity equipment. However, the Commission received more than 2,700 applications representing a total of $3.7 billion in requests, according to the agency. That will likely leave many applicants without any of the FCC cybersecurity support or with less than what they requested.
Moody’s findings come as ongoing calls for K-12 cybersecurity are amplified at the national and state levels, and as ransomware increasingly poses a threat to shutting down school networks and straining resource-strapped districts.
Although various K-12 content filter providers offer a small degree of protection with their content filtering products designed to prohibit students from accessing inappropriate content via their district provisioned device, these solutions do nothing to address the cybersecurity crisis, and in fact often hamper the districts interest in providing students greater access to learning resources, which are now mostly cloud based.
In addition, these solutions often give districts a false sense of security, often focusing on other capabilities like parent portals and high-risk reporting, which are important, but do nothing to address the malicious actors who often use these features as entry ways to attack students, families, and districts cloud-based resources. Most K-12 content filter manufacturers have missed the call to provide enterprise cybersecurity capabilities including data loss prevention, Unified Zero Trust Service Edge (now required across most Federal agencies), Malware protection, and AI controls, to name a few.
In my over 20 years of serving in public education; from teacher to Chief Information Officer, I have never seen in the recent past the scope of dynamic digitization designed to provide students with a rich and rewarding education, and we’ve only just begun, especially with the introduction of AI. That’s why I recommend you learn more about iboss, the only K-12 cybersecurity platform E-Rate Eligible as FWaaS, and the only SaaS Zero Trust Security Service Edge designed to support the unique CIPA, and cybersecurity requirements of K-12 school districts, including classroom management, parent portal AI controls and high risk reporting features and the platform is engineered to support any device type.
iboss enables schools to eliminate purchasing and managing multiple legacy technologies including Internet web filters, VPNs, and the need to redirect student and staff internet access to the school while they work remotely. The result is unmatched security, visibility and internet policy management across the district, while significantly increasing the school’s cybersecurity posture to military grade standards, protecting the school’s most critical data from cyber-attacks. For more information on the iboss ZT SSE for education and our 85% E-Rate eligible FWaaS, visit our website: For Education – iboss. For more information on the Roadmap to Developing a K-12 Districtwide Cybersecurity Ecosystem ebook, complete the form here.
Posted by iboss K-12 Cybersecurity / Richard Quinones SVP Public Education
