Dive Brief:

• Schools that have updated to next-generation firewalls have consolidated services into a single platform, increased cybersecurity and gained a more powerful processing system.
• Ed Tech magazine reports Lake Washington School District, outside of Seattle, made the move to an NGFW when it started giving students digital devices, looking for all the benefits of more power, better protection and consolidation of the firewall, URL filter and deep packet inspection device.
• When deciding on an NGFW purchase, school IT leaders suggest figuring out the goals and future policies before buying a tool to meet them, finding a flexible system that will be able to adapt to changes and considering the user-friendliness of the system capabilities.

Dive Insight:

Schools are having an increasingly difficult time with tech security as teachers build more technology into their classroom lessons, more students show up with and have access to digital devices, and hackers zero in on the education sector as an area ripe for attack. Schools are particularly vulnerable because of the relatively little spent on cybersecurity and the breadth of personal information they hold onto. A small, rural district in New York even found itself the target of an attack recently. The breach exposed personal information of thousands of people because, beyond data connected to its 150 current employees, the school had stored information about past employees and district contractors.