Exclusive: White House will host summit to discuss rising cyberattacks on schools
- Sam Sabin, author of Axios Codebook
First Lady Jill Biden speaks during a National Education Association event on July 4. Photo: Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A group of school superintendents, educators and education technology vendors will meet at the White House Monday to discuss the growing number of cyberattacks targeting schools, a White House official told Axios.
Why it matters: Ransomware continues to pummel school districts across the United States, from major cities to small towns.
- Yet schools have struggled to fight back due to a lack of money, employees and technical resources.
Details: First Lady Jill Biden, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas will host the Cybersecurity Summit for K-12 Schools on Monday afternoon, the official told Axios.
- Participants will discuss the ways they can work together to secure schools' online infrastructure, per the official.
- Both government agencies and private industry are expected to announce new "commitments" at the summit, although the official did not say what those will entail while they're being finalized.
- Representatives from the White House, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and Federal Communications Commission are also expected to attend.
The big picture: The most recent school year saw eight significant cyberattacks, including four that forced schools to cancel classes, according to the White House.
- These attacks come at a high cost for schools: A government watchdog report estimates school districts lose anywhere from $50,000 to $1 million when responding to a cyberattack.
- School IT leaders have started getting creative to keep their networks safe. Some are sharing threat intelligence with each other, while others are hiring third-party security operations centers to monitor their systems 24/7.
Between the lines: In the past, the Biden administration has used events like this one to stage proposals for new regulations or to make new grants relating to cybersecurity.
- A new consumer cybersecurity label for internet-connected devices started as a workshop at the White House to discuss the best paths forward.
- The White House has also hosted a similar event about cybersecurity workforce demands that ultimately informed a recently released workforce strategy.