The Federal Communications Commission’s cybersecurity pilot program helps school districts and libraries defray the costs of equipment and software to improve defenses against hackers, phishing scams, and other cyberattacks.
Galesburg District 205 is among around 650 school districts nationwide and around 75 in Illinois to receive funding for the three-year pilot program.
“Making sure our students have access to all the opportunities of the digital world has been a cornerstone of my time at the Commission. It is also vitally important that this access is cybersecure,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a release. “Through this program, we will be able to provide our federal, state, and local government partners with actionable data about the most effective and coordinated way to address the growing cyber needs of schools and libraries.”
Jennifer Hamm. assistant superintendent for finance and operations for Galesburg District 205, said the district received $159,000 from the program.
Hamm said the district will use the grant money to buy Arctic Wolf Cybersecurity service, which is a cloud-based platform that offers cybersecurity threat detection, response, and risk management services.
“This is not only an important product to help prevent cyber threats, but products like this are also a requirement by most insurance carriers issuing coverage for cyber protection insurance,” Hamm said.
The district will also be upgrading its servers with other funds. The board of education on Monday approved the $152,000 purchase for three new primary servers, one backup server, and five years of licensing and warranty.
Jared Lynn with Edutech Partners, a consulting firm that works with the district on technology, said the current servers are five to six years old, and the cost to renew the licensing on those was going to be more than $200,000. So it was time to seek some new bids.
“If we don’t do those updates, we now lack security updates and that potentially puts us at harm to security vulnerabilities and threat actors,” Lynn said.
The new servers will also allow the district to host the student management database Skyward in-house instead of with an outside provider.
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