District tech director urges upgraded cybersecurity, proposes 8-year replacement cycle tied to E-Rate funding

Jason Cook, the district's technology director, told the Bethel Local board that rising cyber threats make IT investment central to school operations and outlined recent steps and future plans to protect district systems. "We have established regular off-site backups for our on-site data for protection against ransomware... and purchased endpoint detection and response or EDR," Cook said.

Cook described an application for vulnerability-management software that would identify security gaps and provide remediation guidance, and he recommended additional staff training for phishing prevention. He told the board his team handled about 5,000 support tickets since 2021 and that the department built an inventory system (Site IT) to track device age and schedule replacements.

On hardware planning, Cook said he has developed an eight-year replacement cycle that accounts for E-Rate five-year funding cycles where applicable and argued the schedule will reduce failures, improve return on investment and make budgeting more predictable. Board members asked about staffing, interns, and cross-training; Cook described a four-person full-time team plus an hourly intern who has worked about 16 hours in the most recent week to help clear summer backlogs.

Cook also proposed joining regional cybersecurity consortiums (COSIN and MS-ISAC) and continuing to expand training and monitoring tools; he recommended incremental camera and software upgrades to improve both security and instructional services.