While grown-ups are stuck at home conducting business remotely on a computer, so likewise are kids working remotely on school assignments using a home computer. With the tremendous amount of people doing work and school on home PCs, I’m appalled at the lack of cyber security training happening. We see plenty of stories about students learning at home, but we don’t read much about hacker’s compromising the systems these students use. Sure, we saw the early reports of creeps hijacking Zoom meetings, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

I just read an article about a school district in Duluth, MN, that had its network hacked by who-knows-who. Apparently, hackers tried to breach at least 14 student accounts. While the I.T. team is surely trying to solve the problem, the reality is they are probably in over their heads. According to the Duluth News Tribune, the district reset all passwords as they try to get to the bottom of things. The question remains, though: Is it enough?

Increasingly, reports are coming in about governors slashing funds for public schools next year because tax revenue has been hit hard by the COVID-19 economic downturn. All too often, the technology budget is one of the first line items to take a hit. As school districts face technology budget cuts and hackers become more sophisticated (and desperate for money) it behooves us all to take a deeper look on how we’re addressing cyber-security and privacy protections for some of the most vulnerable among us–our children.