District receives cybersecurity grant

Cedar Grove-Belgium Supt. Elizabeth Freeman announced at Monday’s School Board meeting that the district has received a $100,000 cybersecurity grant from the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Association.

The district learned about the grant at the annual State Education Convention in January. Freeman, Business Manager Tera Rogers and Director of Information Technology Zone Vang put together an application called “Modernizing Cybersecurity at CG-B.”

The money will be used to automate tasks to avoid manually updating security patches, install a gateway to better detect phishing emails, conduct a stress test of the entire cybersecurity system and improve services to block malicious websites and prevent sensitive data from being leaked.

In addition, a tabletop cybersecurity exercise was held last month in the district. A ransomware attack was simulated and no district systems were running.

“We talked through what a day in the school would look like if all the systems were down,” Freeman said, noting affected services were lunch, heating and cooling, attendance, field trips and parent communication.

“It was really beneficial for our team to walk through that process,” she said.