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District technology official outlines cybersecurity upgrades and AI guardrails
Summary
David Millhan reviewed recent cybersecurity and infrastructure upgrades — Sophos endpoint protection, Lumu network detection, Securly classroom monitoring — and said the district is evaluating 'walled' AI options to protect student data while adding new ticketing and asset-management tools.
David Millhan, presenting a program review to the SAVANNAH R-III Board, detailed a series of recent and planned technology upgrades aimed at improving cybersecurity and classroom tools.
Millhan said the district has rolled out Sophos endpoint protection and Lumu network detection and response to give staff automated alerts and to allow rapid, automatic adjustments to firewall and endpoint settings. “We like automatic. That's a good thing,” he said.
The district also moved from GoGuardian to the Securly suite, Millhan said, naming components used for filtering, classroom monitoring and an "Aware" module that flags risky student activity and alerts principals or counselors. He told the board the district has upgraded phones, copiers and cameras and has increased internet capacity.
On artificial intelligence, Millhan said the district is evaluating solutions that provide guardrails — sometimes described as "walled" systems — so that personally identifiable information remains internal while staff can upload curriculum and use AI to retrieve relevant information. “It keeps personally identifiable information internal to us,” he said of the approaches under consideration.
Millhan also said the district is switching its help‑desk ticketing system and adding asset-management capabilities to better track who has what device, including damages and inventory status.
Why it matters: administrators said these changes aim to reduce cybersecurity risk, speed incident response and improve device management as the district deploys new student hardware.
The board asked whether the district conducts phishing education; Millhan said they are not running phishing campaigns for students now but are discussing options with vendors who offer training modules. He also said the district has experienced a small number of incidents and is continuing to harden defenses.
Next steps: Millhan said staff will continue vendor evaluations for AI protections and implement the new ticketing/asset system over the coming months.
