The new academic year has arrived, and a massive influx of users and data is imminent. Is your IT infrastructure ready?
For most educational institutions in the United States from K-12 to higher education, August is accompanied by the eventual start of the fall semester. This can be a stressful and trying time for IT teams working around the clock to make sure the network infrastructure is in place to sustain a massive spike in user traffic, and SQL Server databases have been scaled up to support inevitable growth.
When preparing for these action items, network security looms at the top of the priority list. Colleges, universities, and other education institutions have garnered an unfortunate reputation as being some of the most susceptible targets for ransomware and other cyberattacks. Like many other industries, education organizations possess a great deal of sensitive personal information. However, education industry organizations are uniquely sought after targets due to an unfortunate theme. They often have significantly underfunded cybersecurity departments.
This blog will talk about:
- Vulnerabilities of existing tech like VPN, and what new solutions can offer
- How education sector IT teams can pursue governmental cybersecurity funding
- SQL Server container tech that unlocks effortless scale-up while retaining HA
Back in 2022, we published a blog imploring colleges and universities to start evaluating new networking technologies like software-defined perimeter (SDP) if they wanted to effectively secure their IT environments. Unfortunately, traditional solutions like virtual private networks (VPNs) are accompanied by some acute vulnerabilities in the scope of modern, cloud-based IT environments. For example, VPN:
- Represents a single access point with unlimited lateral attack surface
- Requires physical appliances that necessitate expensive, ongoing maintenance
- Physical boxes are a potential point of failure for the whole network to crash
SDP introduces highly available zero trust network access (ZTNA) tunnels that enable connections at the application level. This app-level connection takes away the excessive network access afforded by VPNs and eliminates lateral attack surface. Software-defined solutions also remove the need for any physical boxes, shrinking maintenance expenses significantly, and eradicating unnecessary points of failure in your network environment.
Software-defined perimeter provides peak network security across any platforms
Along with a detailed commentary on the cyberthreats facing colleges and universities today, our previous back to school blog points out several actionable best practices that are still just as relevant to IT teams today as they were in 2022.
It’s important to note that the scope of this blog changes a bit. Virtual learning picked up a great deal of traction through the pandemic years, and much of that momentum has been retained across all facets of education whether it be actual classroom sessions, or virtual libraries containing personal information and learning resources. Resultantly, K-12 institutions are dealing with much of the same IT complexity and network security pressure as their higher education counterparts, but often with even more inadequate budgets.
Fortunately, governmental awareness of these growing pressures on primary and secondary education institutions is growing, and new funding avenues are being introduced.
Threats Facing K-12 Growing, Government Responding
The need to adopt new network security solutions has only grown more pressing in recent years, as 2023 is now regarded as “the worst ransomware year on record for the education sector.” Malwarebytes recently published a report citing a 105% increase in known ransomware attacks on K-12 and higher education from 2022-2023.
In fact, network security pressure is growing so strong in K-12 environments that dedicated initiatives are being passed at the federal government level to help enhance cybersecurity efforts. One such effort is the launch of the Government Coordinating Council, an unprecedented effort to facilitate collaboration between federal, state, tribal, and local governments for the sole purpose of protecting K-12 schools from cybersecurity threats.
Grant Opportunities Are Growing to Mitigate Budget Shortcomings in K-12
It’s no secret that K12 public schools in the United States don’t generally have much wiggle room in their budgets. It is an especially unlikely thought to imagine a public school coming up with funding for a comprehensive cybersecurity defense plan. However, as threat levels have increased, and budgetary inadequacies have grown more pronounced, new supplementary funding opportunities have been established at all levels of government to help fuel the fight against cyberthreats.
One significant example is the Federal Communication Commission’s Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program which was approved this past June. This program includes an allocation of $200 million with an intended goal to “Study and better understand what equipment, services, and tools will help protect school and library broadband networks from cyberthreats.” Ultimately, the results of this pilot program will be used to inform partners in all levels of government with actionable steps and best practices to tackle the growing cybersecurity threat most effectively.
How Can K-12 Increase Chances of Securing Supplementary Funding
As of the writing of this blog, the application period has not been opened for the Schools and Libraries Cybersecurity Pilot Program in particular. This article provides some important details about that eventual application process.
Speaking more generally though, there are a lot of things K-12 IT teams can do to put themselves in the best position to take advantage of future government grants and cybersecurity funding programs of this nature. The following checkboxes are a good place to start:
- Get thorough understanding of existing environment – Complete a comprehensive audit of current cybersecurity infrastructure and protocols to establish a detailed understanding of the most critical vulnerabilities and areas for improvement in your environment.
- Know EXACTLY how funds would be used – Create a specific, actionable plan (all the way down to specific solutions costs, # of licenses needed, etc.) on how you would use awarded funds if they were granted to your organization.
- Establish measurable goals – Create a list of measurable goals to track progress towards enhanced organizational cybersecurity. You want these goals to reflect your organization’s understanding of established industry best practices.
Do you work at a K-12 institution and want a free tool to assess your organization’s current cybersecurity strategy? The Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency has created a free School Security Assessment Tool (SSAT) to see how your organization measures up with best practices, and even make recommendations on where and how to improve your overall approach. You can access this valuable tool right here: https://www.cisa.gov/school-security-assessment-tool/.
Leverage SQL Server Container Technology for Easy Scale-Up
Along with critically necessary security enhancements, emerging SQL Server container technology also needs to be on the radar of IT professionals operating in this industry. Technologies like DH2i’s SQL Server Operator for Kubernetes provide a much easier way to flexibly scale with the wide-ranging demands put on education sector environments.
SQL Server containers unlock unmatched scalability and resource utilization
DxOperator allows IT teams to spin up totally customizable, highly available SQL Server Availability Groups (AGs) in Kubernetes (K8s) in seconds. DH2i even provides the ability to create cross-platform hybrid AGs containing instances and containers – see it in this demo video.
In other words, you can take your organization’s most critical SQL Server workloads to a flexible, containerized environment without sacrificing any uptime. For the education sector, this means the agility to scale your SQL Server environment in real time to meet seasonal demand in a way that continually ensures optimal resource utilization. This means capturing cost savings and man-hours to distribute among other pressing needs at your organization like cybersecurity.
Education industry IT teams have a great deal of responsibility on their plates all year, and especially this month as their userbase size explodes. Fortunately, governmental bodies and the greater information technology industry are evolving to meet these growing needs with:
- Software-defined perimeter software to replace vulnerable technologies like VPN
- Grant programs to help schools implement needed protections against cyberthreats
- SQL Server K8s solutions to simplify scaling with ever-changing industry demands
If you have questions about this blog or DH2i software, please reach out to [email protected].
