Ephrata School District works to mitigate cybersecurity issues

EPHRATA — Ephrata School District staff and stakeholders met earlier in November to address how the district can prepare for cyber attacks. The exercise was not in response to any specific action against district computer systems but was set to ensure the district was prepared to mitigate any potential problems.  

“Planning now, before a crisis, empowers us to protect our students, staff and resources effectively. It’s our goal to be as prepared as we can so that learning can continue even if challenges arise,” said Ephrata School District Director of IT and Career and Technical Education Sarah Vasquez.  

The session included Ryan Bair, IT director for Columbia Basin Hospital, who co-facilitated the meeting and provided insight from the health care sector which works to protect patient information just as the district protects student information.  

Late last month, Ephrata School District Superintendent Ken Murray said he had attended the Superintendent’s Advisory Committee meeting which pulls together superintendents from throughout the region to meet with the Educational Services District in Wenatchee. About an hour and a half of that meeting was dedicated to cybersecurity and how districts can prevent situations like Highline Public Schools faced in September of this year. Highline reported a ransomware attack against the school wherein hackers attempted to access data on that Seattle-area district’s computer systems. Much of the discussion was centered around mitigating one of the biggest cyber weaknesses an organization faces — system users who aren’t aware of how to avoid malicious software, Murray said.  

Educating staff on how to identify possible phishing emails — those that have some manner of compromising a district’s network embedded into them somehow — and how to respond to them accurately is important, both Murray and Vasquez said during the Oct. 28 regular school board meeting.  

During that same meeting, the board approved multiple purchases to help protect the district’s system. The first was a subscription to Malwarebytes Elite, an antimalware program that is compatible with Windows, Apple, Chrome, Android and iOS operating systems. The second was for Google Workspace for Education Plus, a program that enhances security for Chromebook devices. Both were purchased using a statewide contract that local school districts can utilize to save money on such purchases and streamline access to software as a result.  

Vasquez said the district remains proactive within the IT team to ensure safety and the district has seen some attempts against its systems.  

“We did change all seven-through-twelfth grade passwords two weeks ago because we had two students whose accounts were compromised and their email and password was being sent to various websites,” she said. “And, at this point, we don’t believe the student accounts have much that they can do to infiltrate our phones, our network, that kind of thing, but it’s a topic of conversation for us.”  

Vasquez said the various features of Malwarebytes will allow her and her staff to monitor the district’s devices and ensure they are kept as secure as possible. 

“And that is one of the ESD recommendations, is to be able to do exactly what (Vasquez) just described, because that is a vulnerability when you don’t know a device has a compromise, and (Malwarebytes Elite) allows us to monitor all around the district-owned devices,” Murray said.