Online security emphasized for Luxemburg-Casco students and teachers; October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Internet usage is a daily occurrence for members of the Luxemburg-Casco community, everyone from students and teachers, to staff and administrators. But for all of the positives of the internet, there can be pitfalls. A primary one is when personal information is compromised.

With this in mind, the Luxemburg-Casco School District has put an increased emphasis on its cybersecurity precautions and awareness. Like any organization that holds data on its information systems, L-C is a potential target of those with bad intentions.

Hackers desire any personal information that can identify someone, be it educational, personnel and/or health records.

School districts are a top target of hackers, according to David Luckey, network/hardware support specialist within the district’s IT department. Why is that, you might wonder. Luckey says it is because students typically have a clean credit history, and by stealing a student’s information the person’s identity also could be stolen from him or her.

He recommends that parents actively monitor their student’s credit history to ensure that, if personal information is compromised, immediate action can be undertaken to mitigate damage.

Cyber crime is real. In 2024, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received 859,532 complaints with potential losses exceeding $16.6 billion.

While online security awareness is ongoing at L-C, it is being further highlighted during October, which is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This month the importance of taking daily action to reduce risks when online and using connected devices is being spotlighted.

Luckey says the most important things that members of the L-C school community can do to remain safe online are to keep their systems up to date and to report any suspicious activity right away.

“The faster they respond to something suspicious, the faster we can mitigate the issue,” he says. “A lot of times, computer updates are security updates, which makes it very important to keep your systems up to date. We also train students about phishing (emails purporting to be from reputable companies designed to induce individuals to reveal personal information), along with how to recognize unsafe websites and malicious advertisements.”

The goal of the Luxemburg-Casco School District IT department is for cybersecurity to be a routine practice for students and staff. With the training they have received, teachers and staff are well-positioned to report suspicious online events immediately.

“Technology changes every second, every minute, every hour,” says Luckey, who runs hourly reports and has alerts in place to ensure that student and staff security is protected.

Luckey further volunteers with the Wisconsin Cyber Response Team (CRT), a statewide, public-sector group of incident response practitioners with expertise in addressing cybersecurity events and incidents. It focuses on every phase of a cybersecurity incident: preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.

“Think of CRT as the minutemen for security, responding to incidents. When they’re called upon, they act immediately,” says Luckey. “We help those who have been compromised, helping to mitigate their breach. Experts in the field assist and give direction on how to best handle the cybersecurity incident.”

CRT responded to 27 cyber incidents in 2023, a 30 percent increase over the prior year.

Luckey adds that knowledge is an important aspect of CRT membership. He notes that he can ask a question on the internal CRT channel and receive a response from an industry expert within 24 hours.

The best measure an individual can take to protect themselves online, according to Luckey, is a long password. He shares

that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) recommends every password should be 16 characters; he points to research by Hive Systems that shows a password with 10 numbers can be cracked within one day by a program. Taking a password out to a combination of 16 numbers and upper-/lower-case characters, it would take more than 13 quadrillion years to crack.

Luckey recommends the use of pass phrases because they are easier to remember, and he says to be sure not to include personal information since much of it already is in the public realm.

“Hackers will use your personal information, especially if they’re trying to crack you individually,” he says.

The use of two-step or multi-factor authentication is an additional safeguard, according to Luckey. Most financial institutions already use this protection for their account holders. Personal use of an app or key code that generates a token or code to unlock an account is preferable to your cell phone number, he adds.

With effective cybersecurity becoming an integral part of online best practices – and the increasing need for cybersecurity experts – some L-C students are finding the field to be a potential long-term career path. The district now offers a college-credit course through Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC), Intro to Cybersecurity, as a curriculum option for students.

Luckey sees a growing interest in cybersecurity among students, and had several students join him at a cybersecurity conference in the area last year.

He also has some students researching multi-factor passwords. They are assembling a presentation that will be consumed by middle- and high-school students during Spartan Time. The ultimate goal is to help students be more secure online.

While online safety is critical within the school setting – to maintain individual privacy – it is equally important at home and for students in their future adult lives.

Making cybersecurity best practices second nature in internet usage for the entire L-C community is the ultimate goal.