Long Island school districts breached by cyber crooks records

pMore than 20 school districts across Long Island were hit by cyber hackers leaving more than 10000 students records and personal info vulnerable to criminals state education records revealedppThe widespread data breaches and digital intrusions 28 Long Island incidents were selfreported to the state last year have cybersecurity experts sounding the alarm about schools nationwide increasingly becoming targets for identity thieves ransomware gangs and data extortionistsppDistricts with lower operating budgets are even more at risk according to expertsppSchools have an incredibly rich amount of data Randy Rose vice president of security operations at the Center for Internet Security told Newsday People think its just grades but its personal information sometimes financial informationppTheres data associated with kids that are in need Data on kids that are in afterschool programsppSome of the intrusions on Long Island were minor a student who was caught snooping on a classmates grades but others were much more concerningpp Thirdparty breaches compromised the personal records of more than 6000 students in Great Neck another 1000 Smithtown as well as nearly 2400 in Brentwood and HewlettWoodmere combined according to state education recordsppHackers even infiltrated software systems used by schools across the US education records showppMichael Nizich an adjunct associate professor of computer science at the New York Institute of Technology said the level of regularly updated cybersecurity prevention necessary to adequately protect school districts is just not going to be feasible economicallyppI think what youre seeing is that these school districts are now becoming targets because of the value of data that criminals are starting to find Nizich told NewsdayppBut its not always the firewall that fails Oftentimes breaches boil down to human error as cybersecurity investments only go so far without proper trainingppAbout 45 of the time hackers werent exploiting technical flaws but instead human behavior according to an investigation by Newsday pointing to phishing emails fake login pages and malware disguised as digital adsppAnd the realworld impacts on districts can be devastating as cyber incidents can derail afterschool initiatives delay lunch programs disrupt statewide testing even freeze entire school operations Rose explained ppFor students the possible real life consequences can be even more dire derailing credit scores and impacting their ability to apply for loans and credit cardsppWhen it comes time to go to college or get their first bank account credit card theyre unable to Rose told NewsdayppThe new state budget just added record funding into public education including an additional 270 million for Long Island although each individual district will decide how the money gets spentp