My daughter graduated just from High School. Immediately following her graduation, we leave for our yearly family vacation back to the Maine seacoast. It is the end of the school year and the holiday week. It is always quiet.

  “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” -Thomas Reid, “Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man” – 1786 The SolarWinds Orion hack has been in the news for months now. It is now alleged that an “intern” put a very weak, easily crackable password on a critical system and then copied […]

There is nothing more important than keeping your district and staff and students safe. Cybersecurity is not a topic that you can simply check off the list as done. Much like the computer industry itself, six months ago was the Stone Age.

  Today’s NIST topic is data recovery. The most obvious example of meeting this NIST standard is maintaining good backups. This is something we have all been doing forever, but as long as we have done it, I constantly see the same issues over and over.

  Today we continue our look at a series of practical steps that districts can use to increase their NIST compliance. Looking at the complete set of NIST controls can be a daunting experience. One of the best ways we have found to make these cybersecurity improvements more attainable is following the CIS Controls Top […]

  Today we continue our look at a series of practical steps that districts can use to increase their NIST compliance. Looking at the complete set of NIST controls can be a daunting experience. One of the best ways we have found to make these cybersecurity improvements more attainable is following the CIS Controls Top […]

    Today we continue our look at a series of practical steps that districts can use to increase their NIST compliance. Looking at the complete set of NIST controls can be a daunting experience. One of the best ways we have found to make these cybersecurity improvements more attainable is following the CIS Controls […]

  This week’s NIST TechTidbit is: Maintenance, Monitoring and Analysis of Audit Logs / DETECT.. Activate Audit Logging … This is a simple and complex topic all at once I have been advocating for a good two years that all of you should have an auditing server.

  Today we continue our look at a series of practical steps that districts can use to increase their NIST compliance. Looking at the complete set of NIST controls can be a daunting experience. One of the best ways we have found to make these cybersecurity improvements more attainable is following the CIS Controls Top […]

  Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges / DETECT / PROTECT..Change Default Passwords..Ensure the Use of Dedicated Administrative Accounts There is a lot here to unpack. If you haven’t done so already, you should try very hard to break your reliance on the default “Administrator” account.