Inspiroz’s 360-Degree Network Security Approach
Protects Your School’s Infrastructure
PROTECT YOUR CHARTER SCHOOL’S NETWORK FROM CYBER ATTACKS
Major corporations aren’t the only businesses at risk for a cyber attack or data breach. Charter schools have a lot of valuable data that hackers want to target – from financial accounts to student and staff information.
Our 360-degree approach to network security helps protect your network, covering a vast range of security challenges. To do this, we do a thorough review of your people, processes and technology.
This helps us identify any issues and proactively address them, before they can be exploited.
COMPREHENSIVE REVIEW OF YOUR SCHOOL DATA
To do this, we start by gathering a complete set of your school’s data to assess it for any vulnerabilities.
This includes:
- Information derived from vulnerability/compliance scans, along with suggested remediation tasks
- Information derived from an enterprise-wide network scan
- Information collected through deployment of a monitoring tool for all network devices to determine operational software, patch updates and anti-virus definitions
- Results of current state assessment and desired future state goals (both organizational and technical)
- Review of suggested critical projects and timelines
- Review of current open requests
- Review of policies and regulations that may be applicable
- Market intelligence and market trends
PUTTING A COLLABORATIVE PLAN IN PLACE
Once the Inspiroz team evaluates all this information, we work with your school’s management team to collaboratively review each issue and assign a risk level – either low, medium or high.
This collaborative process allows all stakeholders to understand the priorities assigned to each issue and its significance to your school’s overall mission. This is an ongoing process as risk levels may change as issues or projects are resolved.
Here’s the process we follow:
- Meet with stakeholders to discuss the list of identified risks
- Assign priorities – from low to high
- Execute tasks based on priority
- Re-assess and possibly re-assign priorities at regularly planned intervals
- Re-align risk levels after annual assessment is completed. This will be done each year and usually 1-2 months prior to budgeting process
DEALING WITH DATA BREACHES
In addition to this ongoing network security plan, the Inspiroz team will also be monitoring for any data breaches or cyber attacks. In the event of a data breach, the Inspiroz team will:
- Notify the school’s operations team with the known facts of the breach
- Identify the open platform and start with a lockdown to avoid any further issues
- Perform a root cause analysis and report it to the school’s management team along with a detailed cleanup plan
- Keep the designated school point of contact continuously informed on progress until issue is solved
COMMON CAUSES OF DATA BREACHES
While there are always exceptions, there are six ways that most data breaches happen in a charter school.
They are:
- Simple or obvious passwords – usually the easiest way a security breach can happen
- Hacker gaining access to user passwords, file access and VPN access
- Systems (OS and application) not being up-to-date
- Old definitions of anti-virus
- Former employees’ accounts not being locked down right after departure
- Lack of policies on password sharing between users
Our team will work with your school to assess these issues on an annual basis. We also recommend conducting training on these topics to help avoid any user-based data breaches.
ANTI-VIRUS, ANTI-SPAM PROTECTION RECOMMENDATIONS
As part of this annual review, Inspiroz also continually evaluates the anti-virus and anti-spam offerings, and may switch out products on a yearly basis to provide the best protection possible.
We know what a single virus can do to users and to an entire school environment. We are currently aligned with multiple vendors (Symantec, Malwarebytes, Avast, Kaspersky, Bit Defender and PC Matic) and their offerings include a mixture of both cloud-based and/or in-house hosted solutions.
Anti-virus and anti-spam solutions are only as good as the definitions that have been downloaded. To ensure that the definitions have been downloaded, the central consoles will be monitored and corrective action taken immediately.
PROTECTING YOUR SCHOOL’S DEVICES AND ASSETS
In order to ensure that your network and devices are protected, the Inspiroz team will ensure that all the following is done:
- All desktops and laptops have an instance of anti-virus software running
- All servers, except for an exempt few, run similar server-based software
- Installing an anti-virus/anti-spam service to screen all inbound and outbound emails
- Alerts are sent to all users regarding potentially harmful viruses that may “invade” a user’s mailbox
- Strong firewall-based content security software is installed to provide an additional layer of protection
- Security is implemented for internet browsing
Inspiroz’s 360-degree network security review helps ensure that all your school’s data, devices and infrastructure are protected from hackers. Don’t let poor planning or data security practices make your school an easy target.
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Want To Protect Your School From Cyber Threats?
Work with our team of IT experts to create a comprehensive network security plan that protects your devices and infrastructure.
