Schools are not safe from cybersecurity threats. Consider this: 

• There have been 712 publicly disclosed cybersecurity-related incidents involving U.S. public schools since 2016, according to the K–12 Cyber Incident Map.
• In 2018 alone, 122 incidents affected 119 public K–12 education agencies, a rate of about one new publicly reported incident every three days of the calendar year, according to The K–12 Cybersecurity Resource Center, which researches education, technology and public policy issues.

“Based on anecdotal information, I would not be surprised if more incidents than the 712 reported actually occurred,” says Douglas Levin, president and founder of EdTech Strategies. “What’s most concerning is that schools don’t just get caught up in online scams by happenstance because criminals are trying to hit everyone, but that they are being specifically targeted.”

Ransomware, phishing and distributed denial of service attacks tend to be the main assaults perpetrated by outside hackers. But students also may contribute to the problem.