K-12 Tech Survival Guide: Tips For Developing & Improving Your District’s Incident Response Plan

District technology leaders share their incident response planning experiences and tips

It's no secret that K-12 districts are targets for ransomware and other types of cyber attacks. Not only do these attacks pose significant data privacy and security risks for students, staff, and communities, they’re also capable of disrupting school operations to such a degree that classes need to be canceled.

Technology in education is integral to all aspects of district operations. Certainly including instruction, but also extending to transportation, security, HVAC, payroll, finance, and more.

For these reasons, incident response planning is critical. When an incident occurs, time is of the essence. Having a documented incident response plan enables a quick and effective response. Whether or not you already have an incident response plan, summer break is a great time to either create one or re-evaluate and improve it.

In this recording, you will hear from Britton Smith, Director of Information Technology at Rosedale USD; Kirstin Collins, Director of Technology at Cedarburg School District; and Neal Richardson, CISO at Hillsboro-Deering School District. They are donating their time to share where they are in their incident response planning process, the steps they took to develop it, what they’ll be doing to improve their cybersecurity readiness and response this summer, and more!

This recorded discussion covers:

• How other K-12 technology teams developed their incident response plans
• What they’ve done, or plan on doing, to improve their incident response plans
• Practical tips and advice for creating or improving your incident response plan
• Why an audit is a good place to start with incident response planning