Technology upgrades supportive

“It has certainly been challenging, just like it has been for everybody else,” he said. “We have managed to stay ahead of most of the demand, but there are some cases where schools are waiting for something and we just can't get it to them as fast as they might like. Fortunately, we've been able to anticipate the need and get ahead of it with orders.”

Cyber attacks continue to be a significant security risk for the Chinook School Division and there are ongoing efforts to implement firewalls.

“Whenever we find out about a security vulnerability, we do our very best to protect ourselves against it,” Geiger noted. “You do the best you can, but you cannot predict what someone is going to find as vulnerability.”

Phishing attacks against school division employees have become a significant problem. Such an attack involves sending a fraudulent message to trick a person to reveal sensitive information.

The school division is using KnowBe4 awareness training to educate employees about the risk of phishing attacks and to help them identify a potential attack.

“That's what in IT is referred to as the human firewall,” he said. “It's the idea of protecting yourself from attacks that go through human beings. So through education we hope to build a human firewall and stop some of those attacks. Humans are the vulnerability right now. We've got our firewalls and our security software to the point where it's really pretty good, but humans are still the weakest spot.”

There are monthly phishing simulations to evaluate the response of employees and to determine if anyone will respond to a phishing e-mail. The use of the KnowBe4 program is helping the school division to improve its risk score for phishing attacks. The industry average for individuals responding to a simulated phishing e-mail is 29 per cent and Chinook staff have been scoring below 10 per cent. As a result, the school division's calculated risk score continues to improve.