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Summary: A new K–12 brief argues prevention alone isn’t enough anymore. Drawing on the latest State of Ransomware in Education data, it finds 66% of school IT leaders lack the human capacity to detect and stop attacks in time, even as recovery metrics improve pushing districts toward round-the-clock detection and response, tighter playbooks, and role-based training.
The Educator reports that attackers are scaling with AI while districts still run lean, which is why “always-on” monitoring is shifting from nice-to-have to baseline. The piece cites the fifth annual Sophos survey of 441 education security leaders: two-thirds say they don’t have enough in-house expertise or capacity to catch and contain threats before damage is done. At the same time, 97% of victims recovered encrypted data last year and ransom payments fell proof that response is improving, even as attackers evolve.
Sophos field CISO Aaron Bugal’s message to schools: assume someone will eventually get in, then design for containment. That means 24/7 detection and response (internally or via outside experts), routine practice of the incident plan, protected backups, and short, frequent awareness exercises for staff and students, because AI is boosting the speed and polish of phishing, fake sites, and vulnerability scanning.
Week 1: Turn on the lights. Point alerts from email, identity, endpoints, and firewalls to a single queue. Name a duty roster (primary + backup) with a one-hour SLA.
Week 2: Rehearse the first hour. Tabletop a likely path (phish → credential theft → SIS access). Decide who isolates, who documents, who communicates to families and law enforcement. Save the artifacts.
Week 3: Protect the recovery. Verify offline/immutable backups and run a small restore test; brief leadership on results.
Week 4: Train where risk lives. Two micro-lessons and a phishing simulation for finance, HR, principals, and front-office staff; a student safety mini-module for device hygiene.
Attackers don’t clock out when the bell rings and AI means their lures and scans are only getting faster. Districts that pair 24/7 detection, rehearsed response, tested backups, and targeted micro-training are cutting incident time and cost, even as the threat landscape evolves. Prevention still matters; resilience wins the day. theeducatoronline.com
