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Bud Hunt
Director of Projects and Initiatives
SETDA
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SETDA Releases 2022 K-12 Cybersecurity Landscape Scan

March 16, 2022 (Washington, DC) — SETDA, the principal membership association of U.S. state and territorial educational technology and digital leaders, released a landscape scan of the pressing needs and priorities of state members as they work together to strengthen K-12 cybersecurity readiness.

The scan is the first release from SETDA’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Collaborative, a professional learning community of state edtech leaders and private sector partners focused on identifying key resources, assessing state-level K-12 cybersecurity advocacy efforts, and crafting policy recommendations.

The collaborative is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and involves SETDA state leaders working with subject-matter experts from K12 SIX and CoSN. Throughout the year, the collaborative will meet bi-weekly to explore expertise, share experiences, and develop resources to help states and their local school districts form a more coordinated cybersecurity response to prevent breaches, mitigate cybersecurity risks, and leverage their limited funding.

One example of how states can enhance cybersecurity readiness comes from the Connecticut Education Network (CEN). Since its launch in early 2016, the CEN statewide distributed denial of service (DDoS) protection has detected and mitigated thousands of attacks on K-12  schools, universities, and libraries. According to Doug Casey, Executive Director of the Connecticut Commission for Educational Technology, “Without this protection, schools would lose Internet access, halting operations and necessitating the emergency acquisition of costly mitigation services.” Casey further stated, “Connecticut’s DDoS protections avoid these costly penalties and maintain operational integrity with 99.99% network uptime.”

This report outlines several of the collaborative members’ priorities around K-12 cybersecurity and will guide their work for the remainder of 2022. Like all resources created by the collaborative, it is released under a CC-BY-SA license.

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About SETDA
The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) is the principal association representing U.S. state and territorial educational technology and digital learning leaders. Through a broad array of programs and advocacy, SETDA builds member capacity and engages partners to empower the education community in leveraging technology for learning, teaching, and school operations.

For more information, please visit our website https://www.setda.org or Twitter @setda