Technology director reports monthly cyber‑security metrics, highlights phishing and credential attacks

Brian Casey, director of technology, presented a monthly cyber‑security briefing highlighting operational metrics and training efforts. He said the September snapshot excluded summer months to reflect regular school operations.

Casey reported routine service disruptions during the month, including two short Skyward outages and a printing issue from Chromebooks tied to a software update. On email security, Casey said “we had over a quarter million emails that came in,” and that the district scanned incoming messages, flagged links and blocked items flagged as unsafe: “60 were deemed unsafe and were blocked before anyone could even click on them.” He also said the team found nine instances of inbound malware that were blocked and removed.

Casey described roughly 60 instances of credential identity attacks the district investigated and said the district continues to detect and remove malware from machines (he cited nine removals in the month). He also said the district blocked multiple impersonation attempts and that multi‑factor authentication remains an important control for staff and students.

The director spotlighted the district’s security awareness training program: the district runs video‑based modules and achieved more than an 80% participation rate in the prior cycle; staff survey responses showed most employees understood how security threats could affect the district and their own families and said they knew steps they could take to reduce risk.

Nut graf: The briefing framed cyber security as an ongoing, high‑volume operational issue — email and credential attacks remain the primary threat vectors — and emphasized continued staff training and multifactor authentication as key mitigations.

Ending: Casey said the technology office will continue to provide monthly metrics and will highlight different topics each month to keep the board informed about the district’s cyber posture.