Schools are built to be open. Attackers are counting on it.
Students log in from home, the library, and a phone on the bus. Staff share files across a dozen apps. Substitutes, contractors, and guests come and go. That openness is the whole point of a school—and it’s exactly what attackers look for.
Meanwhile, you’re protecting all of it with a small IT team. Maybe a team of one. Budgets are tight, devices are everywhere, and nobody has time to read every alert. That’s not a failure of effort. It’s math.
This guide is for IT directors, district technology leaders, school administrators, superintendents, and the managed service provider (MSP) partners who support them, across K–12 districts, colleges, and universities. It skips the scare tactics and sticks to what attackers actually do, where your accounts and data are exposed, and what you can change this semester.
After working through the resources in this cybersecurity for education guide, you should have a clearer picture of why schools get targeted, how identity attacks play out in the tools you already use, and how to say yes to AI without saying yes to everything.
