Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity issues are front and center in school districts today. Since 2017, the Speak Up Research Project has focused on K-12 districts’ cybersecurity preparations. In partnership with iboss, a new Speak Up Research effort was initiated in 2021 to understand the views and values held by school district leaders on their overall readiness to address these unprecedented cybersecurity threats to network infrastructure and data assets. Our collaborative focus is on ensuring that K-12 district leaders have the best information to make better decisions.
K-12 Technology Leaders, take the 2025 Survey!
Why Is Participation from K-12 Leaders Essential?
The contributions of education leaders are critical to ensure that federal (as well as state and local) agencies have reliable and current information from school districts as the foundation of recommendations and new policies.
For example, Dr. Julie Evans, CEO of Project Tomorrow, used the report from 2021 data, Creating a Common Culture of Action Around Cybersecurity to brief the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) team evaluating federal agency coordination on K12 cybersecurity and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security office developing a report on cybersecurity in education institutions.
How Does This Project Differ from Other Cybersecurity Surveys?
There are two important differences.
- Unlike surveys conducted by professional organizations or edtech vendors with limited national representation through membership or customer lists, Project Tomorrow’s Speak Up Project is open to all US K-12 school districts.
- Project Tomorrow provides participants with the aggregated national data results so that they can see how their responses compare with those of their peers nationwide.
What Other Outcomes Have Resulted from This Research?
Our analysis of the resulting data from the second annual 2022 iboss-Project Tomorrow K-12 Education Cybersecurity Research Study and the firsthand insights from district leaders nationwide underscored the imperative that it is time to think differently about K-12 cybersecurity and the urgent need for more shared accountability and responsibility for cybersecurity.
It’s Time to Think Differently: Why a District Cybersecurity Ecosystem is Critical Today led to the development of resources for district leadership. Read the full report. Like all Speak Up resources, these materials are available to districts at no cost.
Essential Components of a Districtwide Cybersecurity Ecosystem: Working Outline from the K-12 National Advisory Council on Cybersecurity
About iboss
This dedicated research focus is generously supported by iboss, a longstanding Project Tomorrow partner. iboss is a cloud security company that provides organizations and their employees fast and secure access to the Internet on any device, from any location, in the cloud. iboss has built the largest global containerized SASE cybersecurity cloud footprint. The iboss SASE cloud platform provides network security as a service, delivered in the cloud, as a complete SaaS offering. This eliminates the need for traditional network security appliances, such as firewalls and web gateway proxies, which are ineffective at protecting a cloud-first and mobile world. Leveraging a purpose-built cloud architecture backed by 230+ issued and pending patents and more than 100 points of presence globally, iboss processes over 150 billion transactions daily, blocking nearly 4 billion malware threats per day. More than 4,000 global enterprises trust the iboss SASE cloud platform to support their workforce, including a large number of Fortune 50 companies. To learn more, visit https://www.iboss.com/.
