Murphy – Cherokee County Schools will pay double what it did before to protect against cyberattacks as other regional districts have seen some issues with cybersecurity.
During a presentation at the Cherokee County Board of Education on April 1, Chief Technology Innovation Officer John Parker told the board that rates would increase, going from about $25,000 to $50,000. Despite the increase, Superintendent Jeana Conley said the expense was necessary.
“We’ve got 500 employees, 3,000 students and their parents, all their information, and we decided that it may sound like quite a bit of money, but when it comes down to what school districts and businesses are having to pay when they get ransomed, it’s a drop in the bucket,” she said.
Conley said Haywood County Schools were subject to a cyberattack in 2020, with the attackers demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars for the return of the district’s information. The district also lost an instructional day due to the attack.
“As a matter of fact, it’s pretty much a requirement that you have to have something,” she said. “We’re making the choice to move it to the top level of security.”
Conley said the district had not yet been subject to a cyberattack, but that it hopes to be prepared should one hit. She also said the insurance the district uses includes training and drills for the district.
“They’ll actually send out fake emails throughout our district, and if you fall for it you have to go through a little training process,” she said. “It kind of helps us train to not fall for those things. It really comes down to the users being smart enough not to click on certain things.”
According to an edweek.org article published March 10, cyberattacks on school districts increased by 18 percent in 2020, likely due to the reliance on technology during the COVID-19 pandemic. The article stated that there were 408 publicly disclosed cyberattacks on school districts in 2020, up from 348 in 2019.
However, school districts are not the only entities taking extra precautions against cyberattacks. Murphy Mayor Rick Ramsey said his town was beginning to take more precautions as attacks became more common, but that so far local networks and data have been spared.
He said the town had purchased software to protect its sensitive information.
“You’d be crazy not to do that, even on your own home,” Ramsey said.