Earlier this month an organized criminal group managed to hack into the school district computer system in Springfield, Massachusetts. The incident is still under investigation. But the school district is not alone in its vulnerability.
Cyber attacks are an increasingly widespread problem for public schools say cyber security experts including John Petrozelli, direct at the MassCyberCenter, a quasi-state agency that focuses on protecting cities and towns around Massachusetts.
Everyone is vulnerable Petrozelli said.
"It's just a question of where on a spectrum they're vulnerable, as we look at things in terms of people, process and technology," Petrozelli said.
Some organizations or entities might have the right people and processes, but their technology is lagging, Petrozelli said. Or they may have the best technology, but the worst policies— like weak passwords, no multifactor authentication in place and sometimes too many people have access to the system
"What we've seen is sometimes people have greater privileges than they should have as an employee, so they can do more in a system or in their cloud based service — than they really should be allowed to do," Petrozelli said.
AI has changed everything, he said.
"Because of AI, because of the growth of attacking groups to be able to coordinate over the internet, the threat landscape is so much more complicated than it was even three years ago," Petrozelli said.
Cybersecurity contracts are expensive. Through the MassCyberCenter and MassTech, the state provides some funding for municipalities to pay for security that would include constant threat monitoring and fast response to an incident.
